{"id":400744,"date":"2026-04-16T01:11:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T01:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/400744\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T01:11:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T01:11:23","slug":"smash-burger-craze-comes-to-wicklow-as-refugee-cousins-open-new-pizza-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/400744\/","title":{"rendered":"Smash burger craze comes to Wicklow as refugee cousins open new pizza place"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ihtisham Khan with his staff, Deputy Brian Brennan and Sandra Hall of Arklow Tidy Towns at the official opening of Pizza Stop on Main Street in Arklow. Photo: Mihael Kelly\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/wa - piz001.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Ihtisham Khan with his staff, Deputy Brian Brennan and Sandra Hall of Arklow Tidy Towns at the official opening of Pizza Stop on Main Street in Arklow. Photo: Mihael Kelly<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Having fled the war in their homeland to start a new life on Irish shores, two Afghan cousins have partnered up to open a new 18-seater takeaway in the heart of Arklow, a \u201cgrowing town with a great community\u201d, one proprietor now proudly calls home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">After arriving in the Emerald Isle ahead of the Taliban takeover, cousins Ihtisham Khan and Farooq Naseri were inspired to take a step into the culinary world by another cousin, Abdur Roof, who had set up a food business in Limerick, before moving it to Tipperary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ihtisham Khan with his staff, Deputy Brian Brennan and Sandra Hall of Arklow Tidy Towns at the official&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,5718,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-400744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eoin-mac-raghnaill","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}