Uprooting a London institution is no small task. Despite living on Warren Street a mere 10 years – a blink in London’s history – Honey & Co had snuck its way into many food-lovers’ hearts, largely because of its casual, ever-affable brilliance. It wasn’t a “smart jacket and longstanding reservation” type of brilliant. You could pitch up to Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich’s small Middle Eastern restaurant any given Tuesday at brunch time and they’d try to squeeze you in for green shakshuka and merguez sausage rolls. Or for a few rounds of sabich (roasted aubergine smeared on to fresh pitta). Sarit grew up in northern Israel; Itamar was born in Jerusalem. Sarit, at one stage, headed the pastry teams for Ottolenghi’s restaurants, while Itamar was head chef at the Notting Hill and Belgravia branches. Honey & Co was their fledgling solo project and London took to the couple’s dinner-time meze feasts avidly. My memories are of humid London nights mopping up hummus made with fresh broad beans and ramson-leaf labneh, or eating paprika-seasoned feta.
Honey & Co’s devil was in the detail: this wasn’t just falafel; they were fresh falafel on a seasoned slick of tahini with a fragrant Lebanese cucumber salad, and the chicken shish came with a verdant freekeh and a lush pea and herb salad. Eating far more than you intended was de rigueur, on account of an unquantifiable orange-blossom-scented largesse in the ambience that foxed customers into ordering the feta and honey cheesecake. This is where full-fat Philadelphia meets double cream, icing sugar and feta and sits heroically on a kadaif pastry nest.
