Quick question guys.......this afternoon whilst talking with my brother we were trying to remember what they called the resturant that used to be above casa disco in the 60 / 70s ...racked our brains all afternoon before remembering it was the aloha...( I think that was the correct spelling ) next question that arose was after it closed what was the name of the Indian restaurant that opened in its place....anybody remember lol....save our sanity please ......lol
India Gardens. You’re right about the Aloha except it wasn’t above Casa Disco it was at street level one door up. Below India Gardens in fact although I’m not sure they ever existed at the same time.
Defo India Gardens had a great meal in there when I first went out down town. I've always been a shandy pants (6 and out, unless drinking rum) and me a few lightweights always ended up in there regularly. Never had a hangover, soaked it up but my mother went through toilet duck like water.
Any music lover would have loved to see what was upstairs at Casa Disco. I used to work there and one wall was full from floor to ceiling with old Vinyl records going back to 70’s. It was the length of the shop front to back about six shelves high. Most lunch times I used to get a soup and a sandwich from Greggs and just pull a pile of records and look though them. Some were scratched or warped and others were perfect. I found some absolute classic records up there and to think Steve probably chucked them in a skip when he closed. Many a time I would venture down into the shop with my findings for t’old punk rocker Steve to say “what’s that **** you’ve found , if it was upstairs it meant no bugger wanted to buy it so it must be sh!te”
Nope The Aloha Cafe was downstairs but there was a separate glass door entrance next to it to upstairs where the Aloha restaurant was. It was owned by Michael a Greek Cypriot who lived on the same road as us in Monk Bretton and the cooks Luca and Michael were also Greek (I think). He had a Mercedes Automatic which he drove like a maniac which had a singles record player mounted in the dash (I kid you not) that used to blare out Bazouki/Greek music. He used to bring me home after the restaurant closed well after midnight and usually took about 4-5 minutes to cover the route from Town Centre to Church farm Estate in Monk Bretton!! He had two kids Louka and Nikki. I know because I worked in the kitchen upstairs at weekends whilst doing my A levels at school making the coffees and helping to prep (Usually involved opening 'Unecol' catering tins when it came to carrots and peas) They were good cooks (I once went to his house and they offered me a meal which at the time (having been brought up on a 'meat and two veg' English diet) which was very Greek ) A great big tray of roasted pigeons appeared alongside lots of Greek vegetable dishes e.g. one I now know was Dolmades - (no idea where he got the vine leaves) loads of garlic (which I had never experienced) and I hardly ate anything. Nowadays I would absolutely love it. Nevertheless the food in Aloha was to suit Barnsley/English clientele at the time (we are talking early '70s so the menu was traditional English... mixed grills, steaks chicken etc (hence tinned peas etc. ) with the most exotic dishes being Chicken chasseur, or Chicken Maryland. At the end of the night at wind-down I also used to get fed and often had a mixed grill made up of offcuts and occasionally a steak. They were great people and he was a good businessman but I lost touch with them but heard , sadly, his ambition was to return to Cyprus and open a Restaurant . Aloha was successful as there were virtually no late night restaurants in Barnsley at the time so it was always busy at weekends so he sold up. Unfortunately, I found out years later (I cannot remember who told me), that he opened one in Nicosia in Northern Cyprus just before the Turkish invasion, annexation and so, lost everything. I often wonder to this day what happened to his family, particularly the two kids who were only 8 or 9 when I knew them, but there is no way of finding out.
I think the family lived near me off Huddersfield Road when they first came to Barnsley. Quite a novelty in those days to have an exotic foreign family in the town!
Always wondered what was up there... spent a lot of my youth downstairs flicking through the vinyl... Has India gardens closed? That was a brilliant restaurant.... although the stairs could be dicey if you’d had a few pints.
The Alloha Restaurant was upstairs and I think next door or near abouts was the KGB club which we used to use as it opened between regular pub afternoon to evening closing times . One of the few ways to get a legal all day session on lol
