We all scream for Teddy's ice-cream

TradeNames: Teddy's is a Dún Laoghaire institution, and its current owners don't plan on changing a thing. Rose Doyle reports

Teddy's is much more than an institution. Dún Laoghaire's best and original ice-cream shop is also a repository of memories without number, the place to go for an enduring summer experience in a changing world.

Teddy's, through the decades since it opened in 1950, has been selling ice-cream from a small shop overlooking the wide expanse of Scotsman's Bay at the end of Windsor Terrace. It also, now as then, sells boiled sweets, iced caramels, clove rock, acid drops and chocolate satins by the quarter pound from jars. On summer Sundays you can get strawberries and ice-cream there - but they don't do flavourings, nor syrups.

"We try to stick with what people got here when they were young," says Yasmin Kahn, who runs Teddy's today, "to keep things as traditional as possible. We still use the original weighing scales. We do Cadbury's ice-cream as well and a couple of Italian ice-creams. I was told when I took over that, if it wasn't broken, then I shouldn't fix it, that I should do things the way they were always done in Teddy's."

Yasmin Kahn has known Teddy's all her life, began working there when still at school. Her father Brian has been intimately acquainted with Teddy's for even longer. Rita Shannon, behind the counter on the day I visited, has worked in Teddy's for more than 40 years.

Teddy himself, real name Edward Jacob and the man who started things in 1950, now divides his time living between Morocco and the south of France. Gone he may be, but certainly not forgotten. Edward Jacob it was who made Teddy's the small seafront empire it was and the team behind today's smaller but no less vital outlet are aware and careful of this. "He was a nice person," Brian Kahn says, "a very nice person. He worked here himself all the time."

Brian Kahn, Yasmin's father and a man who admits himself indebted to ice-cream and the "nice life" it's given him, bought Teddy's from Edward Jacob 10 years ago. "I always loved the place," he says, "even before I came to supply Teddy with ice-cream. It was real ice-cream, quality stuff - not like today when they use maize instead of egg yolk to bind it. Quality, not watery, rubbishy stuff. Real ice-cream - when you bit into it you felt you were eating food. And that's been passed on."

Teddy's, in the beginning and for many years, was an ice-cream shop, tea rooms and souvenir boutique taking up the first stretch of Windsor Terrace. The Kahns are happy to own the landmark ice-cream shop only, and may even build over it to bring back the tea-rooms. "A place where we could serve afternoon tea and cakes, the way they used to," Yasmin says, "where people could sit and just look out. We don't have a lot of space but it could be done. I'd spend all of my time up there myself!"

Teddy's has a way of inspiring loyalty, devotion even, from customers and workers alike. Rita Shannon arrived in Teddy's to do a two-week holiday stint more than 40 years ago. She's still working there, youthful looking evidence that Teddy's has something of Tir na nOg about it. "I just stayed on," she says, "I liked it so much. We had such fun! In those days you could walk from one to the other of the businesses. The awnings were red and white and the shop red and blue. The boutique sold all Irish handmade stuff - Aran sweaters, jewellery, that kind of thing."

Bridie, who died in 1990, was another Teddy's employee who has gone into history. Her devotion was such that she even slept in the place, Brian Kahn says. "People say she's still here, in fact, that they can hear her in the night when they pass by," he says.

Brian Kahn's connections and devotion to Teddy's go back an equally long way, his journey to ownership of Dún Laoghaire's own and original ice-cream event as circuitous as it now seems inevitable.

Born in South Africa, he came to Ireland to study medicine in 1962, gave it up in 1967 and joined Cooper Bros to study accountancy instead. He married and joined the accountants T P O'Neill where he found himself doing the books for "an ice-cream man. He wanted out of the business so a friend and myself bought his vans and machinery and started making ice-cream. Ice-cream's given me a nice life. I've never liked wearing a suit and tie, always enjoyed meeting people."

The links with Teddy's were there before Brian started supplying him with ice-cream. "My late wife lived next door to old Mrs Jacob, Teddy's mother, in Dalkey. There was another son, Michael, too. They were all involved in the business but Teddy was the main one. It was said he got his name from dressing like a Teddy Boy in the 1950s, winkle-pickers and all that. I bought Teddy's after my wife died. I loved it. I used stay open until about 2.30 a.m."

Brian Kahn "retired" five years ago - though Yasmin says that semi-retired is more accurate since he comes into Teddy's most days. "I took over but have to do things his way," she says. "He still likes to keep his finger in the pie." Some thing have changed though. "Up to five years ago we were open late but now we close at 9.30 p.m. For a while it just wasn't safe, people didn't go walking after 9 p.m. It's changing though, getting safer again. We're hoping that, with the lights going up along the sea-front, the evening walkers will come back."

She won't discuss the secret of Teddy's especially good-tasting ice-cream, won't risk de-mystifying a legend. Brian Kahn says it's all to do with quality. "Ice-cream has to be fresh every day so you must clean your machines every day," he says. "Especially in the heat. You'd be surprised how even a little drop left in a machine can affect the taste of things."

The ice-cream business runs from April to October. Yasmin says that they've "managed to keep a steady business through the Celtic Tiger years. We haven't put our prices up for two years and hope to keep it that way."

She'll go on running things, with the help of her brother Haniff, partner Craig Macintosh and Rita. "Haniff may take over in time," she says, "but that's up to him. If he doesn't I'll keep it going. I've been working here since I was 17, before Dad even bought the place, and really love it, the regulars, seeing the kids who come in grow up."

Brian says too that Haniff might take over one day. "He's got a good business head on him. He's like my father and grandfather, even to his gestures." He falls to remembering. "How I've loved the place! I used sit outside Teddy's on the wall in the night and talk and laugh and joke. You could go on all night, there are so many lonely people about. Still are. I see them all the time.

"When we're not open we still get phone calls to the house, people saying they're come home on holiday and want to give their kids the experience of a Teddy's ice-cream!"