Honey & Smoke Grill House — Restaurant in London

I'm probably too much of a grumpy old man now to eat in trendy London restaurants, the tropes all just irritate me too much. The menus that look like shopping lists (perhaps they are authored in Excel, and exported as a CSV file?), with prices written without the pound sign, and pence amounts given to one decimal place. Then of course the ubiquitous "sharing plates", because, presumably, we all have terrible FOMO and can't bear the thought somebody else on the table might be eating something that we aren't? Although I suppose at least sharing plates, in the form of mezze, are appropriate for the cuisine here, being a restaurant serving Middle Eastern food.

Well, it's an anglicised (or should I say Londonised) version of Middle Eastern food, designed for hip middle class Londoners - the sort of people who presumably can't bear a menu cluttered up with pound signs and pence amounts formatted to two decimal places, nor can contemplate that there might be any type of bread other than sourdough (no khobez flatbreads here!).

There is a fixed mezze selection which the menu suggests you start with, and although there were a few morsels here which were quite flavoursome (the grilled peach, the falafel, the pickled cucumber), most of the dishes could broadly be described as lumps of something on top of a bed of something else pureed. This seems to be another trope in trendy London restaurants. As though we might perhaps be expecting an earthquake, and the puree is there to hold the lumps on. A bit awkward to share in a polite/hygienic way - all in fiddly little dishes with no serving spoons, so you can't delicately spoon a little onto your plate, you end up either trying to fork out the lumps without making contact with anything which would remain in the dish or attempting to scoop out some of it with a virgin piece of bread, which one of your dining companions has already manhandled because there were two rolls for three people. By the end of this course a lot of the dishes still had the layer of puree on the bottom. I pity whoever has to do the washing up here.

On to the main courses. In fairness, even in my favourite Lebanese restaurants I tend to just stick to the mezze as from a vegetarian point of view mains in this sort of cuisine are generally a bit less interesting. However here I felt it would have been socially awkward as my two dining companions seemed to want to, and there didn't seem to be a pricing option on the menu to just order mezze without a main. So I had a choice between two dishes for the main course I didn't want, neither of which really appealed. Firstly some grilled cheese, which of course couldn't be the crowd pleaser halloumi because that is now ubiquitous and would be quite uncool, so they had to go with something more left field in the form of manouri which turned out to be exceptionally bland.

This was, however, the lesser of two evils. Please restaurants, please, I beg of you, stop assuming vegetarians want to eat butternut squash. Please. It's awful. Absolutely awful. Really unpleasant texture, cloying but otherwise insipid and practically zero protein content - so why is this here as a headline item in place of the meat in the other dishes? I have no idea where this terrible affliction stems from, but it certainly isn't indigenous to middle eastern cuisine, and I would have hoped the outbreak wouldn't have spread this far. So I obviously did not order this other option.

On the plus side the staff were very pleasant, and they had Chateau Musar on the wine list, which is great... but ultimately if I wanted to eat this kind of food I'd much rather go to one of my favourite Lebanese restaurants in Belgravia or Knightsbridge, where there's a much larger selection of mezze, you can pick and choose the specific mezze dishes you'd like, the portions are generous, the bread is flat as it should be, the prices on the menu have pound signs and two decimal places, and there's absolutely no butternut squash...

OK, so, where to begin erm.....we almost made a right balls up and went somewhere else but as we were discussing a restaurant in North London i suddenly remembered my honey & Co cook book and picked up my phone to call for a table.... Damn fully booked! Oh well it was worth a shot, then I hear the very polite lady say "we do have reservations at our sister restaurant Honey & smoke if you would be interested sir, sure let's give that a day in court ;) so after a quick chat with my better half I book it for 7:15pm. After arriving we were warmly greeted and shown to our table downstairs, the aroma wafting throughout was intoxicating I couldn't wait to see the menu and it did not disappoint we chose the set menu for 2 from the winter mezze followed by a main from the grill then a dessert all for £32.50, cheap enough to say you found it, trust me it's worth double ;) the staff are friendly and know what they are talking about, I ask lots of questions as I'm really into food and cooking, they were only too happy to answer and chat about courses and ingredients with a genuine smile. Our starters set the tone, big bold aggressively seasoned plates for 2 from stunning homemade sour dough bread with fragrant, rich olive oil, pickled beetroot with clove to poached pears with pomegranate seeds, almond cream and salted almonds (intriguing for sure). Then onto our mains, my Mrs had the octopus with lentils OMG! This is a MUST have dish! Nuff said. My pigeon with golden raisins and rice was delicious but I have to say the green eyed monster was firmly on my shoulder after a little taste of my Mrs octopus! Oh well next time. After a refreshing glass of jasmine iced tea with orange blossom water our desserts arrived tbh it didn't look like much just some cream cheese on some pastry like-ish thingy.......oh how looks can be deceiving! I could've eaten a bucket full of this and gone back for seconds! A few quite simple ingredients lovingly put together to create something truly memorable. This was our first visit to Honey & smoke but I can assure you that it will definitely Not be the last. If you have any passion or even a glimmer of excitement for really good food then this is a MUST try place, I honestly can't recommend this restaurant enough, I'm going...

This place has been on my to-try list for the longest time as I can remember so I was super excited to be able to finally try it with a friend for dinner on a Thursday night. Definitely book a table before heading there because it was very popular and tables got filled up quickly after we sat down at 6:30!

My friend is vegetarian so we only went for the vegetarian dishes and ordered the mezze plate, badargani (rolled aubergine with pomegranate) and the butternut squash and currant kibbeh. Everything was amazing honestly but our favourite was the baba ghanoush that came in the mezze plate, it's sweet and savoury and had a creamy texture, paired with the fluffy pita it was a lovely combo. Falafels were crispy and savoury too, loved the sauce at the bottom which tasted like honey and yoghurt. Hummus on the other hand was rather mushy and dry so we didn't like it. Kibbeh was good, crispy again and the taste of butternut squash was so comforting and the currant made it refreshing to eat. Badargani was really nice too, aubergine and pomegranate are honestly some of the greatest culinary combos. But my absolute highlight of the dinner was the feta and honey cheesecake 🤤it's sooo well-made with the kadaif base, the feta cream cheese with honey was such a heavenly combo! We were already full from the mains but I insisted on ordering this because I didn't get to try from Honey & Co last time and I didn't want to have any regret. It's so worth it and perfect for sharing between 2, highly recommend this.

Service was really good, friendly and smiley staff. Good vibes and modern interior design. I would be keen to come back soon and try the meat dishes next time like the...