Newtown Institution Saray Kebabs Will No Longer Open Past Midnight
No more late-night kebabs and halal snack packs for Newtown.
Newtown kebab joints have been having a pretty rough time of it lately. First Istanbul on King was pulled up by the council for trading after midnight, in breach of its license, and now Saray Turkish Pizza and Kebabs on Enmore Road has suffered the same fate.
In a Facebook post the restaurant wrote “Dear valued customers, from yesterday we started closing at 12:00am due to the new regulations of Marrickville Council. Sorry about the inconvenience… Saray Family & Team.”
Hungry, kebab loving punters were, unsurprisingly, devastated. There’s really only two places to get an early morning feed in that part of Newtown: Saray and Oporto. With Istanbul having its trading hours pared back, Saray was the last place you could pick up a sneaky kebab or halal snack pack in the early hours of the morning.
So what’s actually behind the new midnight curfew? According to an Inner West Council spokesperson (the Marrickville Council mentioned in Saray’s post no longer exists), the council responded to a complaint alleging the business was “making too much noise and mess, and was making the area unsafe.” While following up the complaint the council found out Saray’s license only allowed them to operate up until midnight, so they told the restaurant to limit its hours.
The council spokesperson told Junkee that Saray could apply for an extended trading license, though they didn’t explain why it took council so long to enforce the existing trading hours. Saray has been until 4-5am for years now and it’s on a pretty busy street. It’s weird no one picked up it was operating illegally all this time.
In a more recent Facebook post Saray wrote that they had applied for an extended trading license and apologised to the council for suggesting “new regulations” were to blame.
The whole controversy got us wondering how many food outlets in Newtown were legally allowed to remain open after midnight. Given the number of drinking venues and the bigger crowds post-lockout laws (Newtown sits outside the lockout zone), it seems like having a variety of food options would be a pretty sensible thing. The council told Junkee that just three food premises on Enmore Road had a license to trade after midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. They didn’t know the equivalent figure for King Street.
So if you’re going out in Newtown this weekend it’s worth bearing in mind your post-drinking meal options aren’t going to include HSP’s, at least for a while.