Uprooting a London establishment isn’t any small job. Regardless of residing on Warren Road a mere 10 years – a blink in London’s historical past – Honey & Co had snuck its approach into many food-lovers’ hearts, largely due to its informal, ever-affable brilliance. It wasn’t a “sensible jacket and longstanding reservation” kind of sensible. You may pitch as much as Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich’s small Center Jap restaurant any given Tuesday at brunch time they usually’d attempt to squeeze you in for inexperienced shakshuka and merguez sausage rolls. Or for a couple of rounds of sabich (roasted aubergine smeared on to contemporary pitta). Sarit grew up in northern Israel; Itamar was born in Jerusalem. Sarit, at one stage, headed the pastry groups for Ottolenghi’s eating places, whereas Itamar was head chef on the Notting Hill and Belgravia branches. Honey & Co was their fledgling solo mission and London took to the couple’s dinner-time meze feasts avidly. My recollections are of humid London nights mopping up hummus made with contemporary broad beans and ramson-leaf labneh, or consuming paprika-seasoned feta.
Honey & Co’s satan was within the element: this wasn’t simply falafel; they had been contemporary falafel on a seasoned slick of tahini with a aromatic Lebanese cucumber salad, and the hen shish got here with a verdant freekeh and a lush pea and herb salad. Consuming excess of you supposed was de rigueur, on account of an unquantifiable orange-blossom-scented largesse within the atmosphere that foxed prospects into ordering the feta and honey cheesecake. That is the place full-fat Philadelphia meets double cream, icing sugar and feta and sits heroically on a kadaif pastry nest.
When Honey & Co Warren Road introduced it was closing there was a lot mewling from followers, though a plan was rapidly in place to reopen in an alternate Bloomsbury house, on Lamb’s Conduit Road, immediately reverse the marvellous Noble Rot – a reputation all readers ought to have stashed for an important day. Honey & Co and Noble Rot being inside winking distance of one another feels wholly right; they’re each eating places which have quietly change into stalwarts of the London eating scene. Nonetheless, as I set off for my first dinner on the all-new, considerably more energizing and prettier Honey & Co, I had trepidations. You’ll be able to’t simply “transfer” a restaurant. The magic is in a plethora of small issues aside from meals: the acoustics, the convergence of tables, visitors noises, the situation of the loos, an excessive amount of or too little cooking odour, and on and on. Proprietors can transfer areas and serve the identical dishes on the identical plates however the spell is in some way damaged.
I shouldn’t have nervous as a result of on a heat July night – the type of climate that leaves the again of your knees damp – the demand for spare seats was fervent as I sat having fun with a jug of iced tea.
The summer 2022 menu is considered one of their finest. Beware: the small plates are hefty, so a diminutive-sounding “home pickle plate” was an abundance of dressed kohlrabi, pickled cucumber, beetroot and carrot and kalamata olives. A peach salad with juicy, candy fruit and goat’s cheese strewn with almonds was outstanding. The hummus isn’t merely squished chickpea, however a vessel for a pungent inexperienced chilli tatbila dressing, topped with crisp, deep-fried chickpeas.
In case your urge for food is small, one might actually cease ordering there. However that’s not enjoyable, is it? Why miss the crispy lamb shoulder with feta and urfa butter dressing that comes with a lush rocket and mint salad and appears like loading vitamin-powered goodness immediately into your face? Or a serving of crisp za’atar-encrusted potatoes on labneh, which was priced at a slightly eye-popping £13.50, however was sufficient to feed two or three?
Sure, Honey & Co is a little bit completely different now, maybe extra grownup and formal, however the previous loveliness is there in spades. Service was heat and immediate, and when the meals started to reach, there have been audible gasps over the eye to element, as a result of you should buy Honey & Co recipe books till you’re blue within the face, however you’ll by no means make Yemeni falafel or taramasalata with pickled purple onion and chopped egg fairly like they’re served right here.
Rejoice! The feta and honey cheesecake continues to be on provide. Nevertheless, I like to recommend the chocolate terrazzo cake, a slice of stiff, shiny, wowish triple-chocolate layered gateau served – on the night I visited – with a marzipan ice-cream that could possibly be one of many biggest issues I’ve eaten this yr. We mentioned this ice-cream for a number of days afterwards. It wasn’t even billed on the menu. Why would they cover it? Was it an impromptu invention? Will there be extra of it? These items hold me awake at evening. There’s a number of issues to fret about in life proper now. I choose to give attention to my abdomen.
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Honey & Co, 54 Lamb’s Conduit St, London WC1N 3LW. 020 7388 6175, honeyandco.co.uk. Tuesday-Saturday, 9.30am-10pm. Round £50 a head for dinner, plus drinks and repair.
Author: ” — www.theguardian.com ”