Tasting notes

Chefs’ kitchen-table feasts

WHEN RESTAURANT CHEFS divulge what they cook at home, an omelette, or a tin of tuna on toast, is usually the extent of it. After 12-plus hours at the stove, who’d blame them for not knocking up hand-rolled pasta or slow-cooked pork belly, or not even wanting to eat for that matter?

There are some cooks, though, around whose kitchen table many of us would love to feast. Being offered a nip of Fernetbranca by St John mastermind Fergus Henderson at his and wife Margot’s home, while a goose burnished in the oven, topped my list last year. And having squeezed round one of the tiny tables groaning with tender lamb shawarma and tahini-crusted aubergine at Honey & Co in Fitzrovia, I could only imagine how good dinner would be chez Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, its co-founders. Until now – for this month the Israeli couple published their new book, Honey & Co: At Home (Pavilion, £26).

It was their kitchen, in their south London home, that they ransacked in order to open the restaurant in 2013 (they now have three outlets), and it’s where they cook spiced lamb and fish tagine for each other, if ever they get homesick for the flavours of their childhood. The book is laced with touching detail (when making scrambled eggs, Packer scoops out Srulovich’s early because he prefers them runny). It’s also packed with dishes that shout ‘make me!’ for our own delicious dinners, while we wait for that invitation.