Honey & Smoke

Smoke, Char, and Moroccan Sourdough in Fitzrovia

Walk into Honey & Smoke on Great Portland Street and the room tells you exactly what kind of place it is before you sit down. Tiled floors, plain square tables, plastic chairs: the aesthetic is canteen, not salon. The smell, though, is something else — coal smoke curling out of the open grill, spiced yoghurt, and charred alliums layering over the baseline hum of a packed dining room. London has plenty of rooms that dress down their interiors while charging fine-dining prices, but Honey & Smoke earns its casual register honestly. The food here is direct fire and ferment, and the room reflects that without apology.

For readers comparing Fitzrovia's Israeli cooking against London's wider offer, this is a different register entirely from the white-tablecloth kitchens at CORE by Clare Smyth, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, or Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library. Those rooms demand a different kind of attention. Honey & Smoke asks only that you share plates and tear bread.

Bread as the Opening Argument

Moroccan sourdough arrives early, and it matters. In the tradition that runs through Levantine and North African cooking, bread is not accompaniment — it is the first vessel, the logic that shapes what follows. The loaves here are built for scooping: dense enough to hold a heap of creamy houmous, porous enough to absorb the smoke-edged oil pooling under a baba ganoush. The sourdough acts as the connective tissue between the meze courses, the reason a plate of pickles or a salt-baked beetroot with yoghurt becomes a full sensory argument rather than a garnish.

This is the editorial point worth making about Israeli cooking in London right now. The city's Middle Eastern restaurants have split between two formats: the refined, small-plates-and-natural-wine room aimed at the Shoreditch crowd, and the unaffected, generous, communal table more loyal to the cooking's actual roots. Honey & Smoke sits firmly in the second category. The bread, the ceramic sharing dishes, the crackers laid alongside baba ganoush , all of it is calibrated for breaking and passing, not for individual plating. That communal logic is also what makes the venue work as a group booking. A table of four here generates a very different rhythm from a tasting menu counter.

Israeli restaurant culture beyond London follows similar patterns. 12 Chairs in New York City and Ash'Kara in Denver both operate on the principle that sharing is structural, not optional. London's version, in Honey & Smoke, has the additional weight of Ottolenghi-trained chefs behind the counter, which gives the meze a particular precision even in its generous portions.

The Grill and What Comes Off It

Beyond the opening spread of meze, the coal grill is the kitchen's defining piece of equipment. The menu rotates seasonally, but the format is consistent: meat, fish, and vegetables fired over coals, arriving as larger plates to sit alongside the sharing dishes. Beef kofta with braised white beans and tomato salsa, tuna skewers with preserved lemon and coriander chermoula, mushroom shawarma with turnip pickles and cabbage slaw , the descriptions carry the logic of the whole menu. Each dish anchors a central ingredient in something fermented or acidic (preserved lemon, pickles, tomato salsa) and something textural (beans, slaw, crackers). The grill provides the char; the kitchen provides the counterpoint.

Opinionated About Dining, which covers the casual European dining tier with particular rigour, ranked Honey & Smoke at number 446 among casual restaurants across Europe in 2024 and moved it to 484 in 2025, with a recommendation in 2023. Three consecutive years on that list places it in a small cohort of London casual restaurants that hold sustained peer recognition rather than a single year's attention. For context on what OAD casual rankings represent: the list draws from a large base of industry and food-professional voters, making it a different signal from general review aggregators. A Google rating of 4.4 across 1,105 reviews broadly confirms the picture.

Credentials and Competitive Set

Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich built their reputation at Honey & Co, the smaller, more intimate original that moved from Warren Street to Lamb's Conduit Street in 2022. Honey & Smoke, their Fitzrovia offshoot, is the larger-format version, trading intimacy for capacity and adding the coal grill as its distinguishing element. Both chefs carry Ottolenghi credentials, which in the London context is a meaningful signal , it implies training in a kitchen that treats Middle Eastern spice with technical precision and seasonal discipline.

The peer set for Honey & Smoke is not the Michelin-starred rooms of West London. The Ledbury or Nopi operate at different price points and with different structural ambitions. Honey & Smoke competes instead with the tier of London restaurants where the cooking is serious, the room is unpretentious, and the booking fills without a three-month wait. That tier is, arguably, where London's most interesting casual dining now lives. Readers planning a wider UK trip can also reference exceptional destination restaurants further afield: The Fat Duck in Bray, L'Enclume in Cartmel, Moor Hall in Aughton, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton , all occupying a very different bracket but useful framing for where casual Israeli cooking sits in the broader picture.

Dessert, Drinks, and Seasonal Logic

The feta and honey cheesecake with almonds and blueberries on a kadaif pastry base has accumulated enough word-of-mouth that it functions as a signature, even though the kitchen rotates its sweet courses seasonally. Kadaif pastry , the shredded-wheat style dough used across Turkish, Greek, and Levantine traditions , gives the base a crunch and a slight bitterness that cuts through the cheese and honey. The cheesecake is an argument, not just a dessert: it positions Honey & Smoke's cooking as rooted in a wider regional food culture rather than purely in one national tradition.

Wine list orients itself toward the Mediterranean, which makes sense given the food. Beers, cocktails, and sherry complete the drinks offer. The sherry component is worth noting: amontillado and fino both work exceptionally well with smoky grill cooking and with the salty, acidic character of meze.

Planning Your Visit

Honey & Smoke is open Tuesday through Saturday from midday, with Monday evenings from 5pm. The kitchen closes at 10:30pm across all open days. Sunday is closed. The room on Great Portland Street is the standalone Fitzrovia outpost; the original Honey & Co now operates from Lamb's Conduit Street. Both are distinct operations. The canteen format and casual room make Honey & Smoke accessible for children, though the communal sharing format and evening atmosphere on weekends skew toward adult groups. For a broader view of where Honey & Smoke sits in London's dining ecosystem, see our full London restaurants guide, as well as our London hotels guide, London bars guide, London wineries guide, and London experiences guide.

Quick reference: 216 Great Portland St, London W1W 5QW. Open Mon 5–10:30pm, Tue–Sat 12–10:30pm. Closed Sunday.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Honey & Smoke suitable for children?

The canteen-style room, sharing format, and casual atmosphere make it broadly accessible for families with children. The menu's structure , multiple small plates arriving across the table , suits groups with varied appetites. Weekend lunches are the most relaxed setting; Friday and Saturday evenings tend to run louder and fuller, which may factor into the decision for younger children.

What should I expect atmosphere-wise at Honey & Smoke?

The room is deliberately unpretentious: tiled floors, plain square tables, plastic chairs in a canteen-scale space. It is a busy, sociable room rather than a quiet dining environment. OAD's three consecutive years of recognition confirm that the kitchen's output is taken seriously in casual dining circles, but the room itself signals no formality. Expect noise, shared tables in close proximity, and a pace set by the grill rather than by a tasting menu clock.

What do people recommend at Honey & Smoke?

Meze spread anchored by Moroccan sourdough draws consistent praise, with the houmous and baba ganoush forming the foundation that most tables start with. The coal-fired larger plates , kofta, skewers, and shawarma formats , represent the kitchen's point of difference from pure meze restaurants. The feta and honey cheesecake on a kadaif base has acquired a reputation significant enough that it appears in most accounts of the restaurant. Packer and Srulovich's Ottolenghi training is legible in the precision of the spicing throughout, which separates the cooking from more generic Middle Eastern grill formats in the city.