The Canonbury Road restaurant – which has featured on Restaurant’s list of the top 100 places to eat in the UK – closed at the end of last year after a 10-year run, with Tiernan and his wife Kate saying at the time that they wanted to “hit the pause button”. Black Axe Mangal originally launched as a six-week kebab pop-up in the backyard of a Copenhagen nightclub in 2014.
The London restaurant closed during lockdown, reopening as FKABAM, standing for ‘Formerly Known as Black Axe Mangal’. Ahead of the relaunch, Tiernan is partnering with Irish dairy brand Kerrygold to stage a two-day pop-up at the Canonbury Road site. The Kerrygold Cream Cheese Sandwich Shop will offer three sandwiches. A vegetarian option will combine mushroom mapo tofu, scallion cream cheese, coriander and pickles on a Papos plain bagel.
Tiernan describes it as “fun, interesting and not something you’ll see all too often”. His take on a BLT will feature thick-cut Irish bacon with a char siu cure, Kerrygold garlic and herb cream cheese, lettuce and roasted tomato on Dusty Knuckle sourdough. The third sandwich takes inspiration from Black Axe Mangal’s squid ink flatbread, combining smoked cod roe and wild Irish seaweed cream cheese with lemon zest, trout ca
A total of 300 complimentary sandwiches will be served each day, with 100 of each creation available on a first-come, first-served basis. “Kerrygold has always been part of my food story and, for this collaboration, I wanted to create a range of sandwiches that recognises the best of Irish produce, complementing Kerrygold Cream Cheese with big, bold and unexpected flavour combinations you might not taste every day.
I can’t wait to get behind the counter and share these sandwiches with everyone,” says Tiernan. The Kerrygold Cream Cheese Sandwich Shop will operate on 23 and 24 October.
