Dishes at Honey & Smoke. Photo: Patricia Niven
Dishes at Honey & Smoke. Photo: Patricia Niven
Dishes at Honey & Smoke. Photo: Patricia Niven
Dishes at Honey & Smoke. Photo: Patricia Niven

Why Middle Eastern food dishes are flourishing in London


Jamie Prentis
  • English
  • Arabic

Foodies in the UK are increasingly turning to falafel, hummus and kofta to fill their stomachs, according to recent findings by research and consulting companies CGA and ­AlixPartners. As the country's restaurant sector continues to struggle, several American, Italian and French eateries have closed amid the crisis, but Middle Eastern food has managed to buck the trend.

“The rapid growth of restaurants focused on certain cuisine types highlights how they can quickly find favour in response to the fast-­changing tastes of British diners,” says Graeme Smith, managing director of AlixPartners.

The rapid growth of restaurants focused on certain cuisine types highlights how they can quickly find favour in response to the fast-changing tastes of British diners.

Focused exclusively on restaurants (and not cafes or takeaways), the research found a five-year growth in the number of Middle Eastern restaurants now open – from 60.7 per cent to 270 per cent by June 2019. Independent restaurants outnumber chains by more than five to one, and interest has been ­turbocharged by a range of cookbooks – from Anissa Helou's Feast: Food of the Islamic World, to the collaborative #BakeForSyria for keen bakers – targeted at the region's food. 

Restaurant owners say the cuisine’s ability to suit any taste – from meat-eaters and vegetarians to the health-­conscious – is probably behind this popularity. In London’s bustling but ultra-competitive restaurant scene, those in the business report a marked change in preferences.

Healthy food on top

West London, in particular, has long been the heartland for the best places to eat Lebanese food in the capital. Al Waha restaurant in Notting Hill's Westbourne Grove, which has been open for 22 years, has prided itself on serving truly original, authentic Levantine food.

General manager Mohamed Antabli, who is originally from Syria and has been at Al Waha since the beginning, often harks back to the early days when "there was no fuss" from customers over what they would eat. "They would in fact tell you: 'OK, you feed me. What is the best?' So there was a fantastic trust between the clients and us. Gradually this changed quite a lot," he says. "People became more fussy, then we started having these allergy problems, gluten problems, vegans, vegetarians. So you have to deal with all of that as well."

However, the demand for health-conscious meals – as observed by Antabli and ­alluded to by the CGA and AlixPartners research – seemingly worked to Al Waha's benefit. "I mean, we have 55 starters … We cover the whole lot," says ­Antabli. "[Once] people started to be more health-aware of what they want to eat, they avoided anything to do with deep-­frying for a while and then they started to go for something grilled.

Dishes at Lebanese restaurant Al Wala
Dishes at Lebanese restaurant Al Wala

"People are also going for a lot of salads nowadays. We have the cold starters, the tabbouleh, the fattoush, the aubergine salad, the cucumber salad, all these sort of things, healthy stuff. People are asking for it more and more." He notes that diners used to ask for only one salad before moving on to hot starters and main courses, but now the emphasis is often on having four or five salads.

Al Waha served a lot of kofta in the past, but has now made a move towards white meat. It is glaringly apparent, says Antabli, that chicken has replaced lamb as the main meat – typically four times as much chicken is sold as customers go for a less fatty option.

This apparent transition towards better nutrition has also been noticed by Ibrahim Dogus, who owns the Troia Southbank Charcoal Kebab Kitchen, which opened in 2013, and serves Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food. Dogus has seen a "gradual but marked increase" in the popularity of Kurdish and Turkish kebabs, but also dishes with more vegetables, such as imam bayildi, an aubergine-based dish with tomatoes, garlic, peppers and chickpeas.

“It is our mezze options, however, that have become the most popular,” he says. “We see people choosing to mix more traditional mezzes with small European dishes, such as a deep-fried Brie. This perhaps reflects an increasingly adventurous approach to food choices and combinations – as witnessed by the success of fusion restaurants – but also that Turkish, Kurdish and Middle Eastern food is no longer considered something completely foreign, but rather part and parcel of British cuisine.

Vegetarian vote

Another obvious trend is the move towards vegetarian food. Where before diners may have asked for hummus with lamb, they now ask for it with pine nuts instead, and rather than a Levantine pizza with lamb, they choose ­halloumi on bread.

One of the most popular Middle Eastern restaurants to join the flurry of openings in the past decade was Honey & Co, which opened in London's West End in 2012. The success of its owners, Israeli chefs Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer, led to the opening of a grill (Honey & Smoke) and a food shop (Honey & Spice).

Honey & Spice in London. Photo: Patricia Niven
Honey & Spice in London. Photo: Patricia Niven

The food is "the kind you find in people's homes using the best ingredients we can get our hands on. I think people are more keen to go plant-based, and Middle Eastern food is very, very easy," says Srulovich. "We use a lot of vegetables, a lot of herbs, less meat and all the rich meat sauces. So we've seen a lean towards that, definitely."

Soon after Honey & Co opened, Srulovich and Packer were approached by a number of publishers, who had noticed that people were showing an interest in learning to cook the cuisine. Their cookbook At Home: Middle Eastern Recipes from our Kitchen was published in 2014. "It worked really organically for us at the time because we were at a place with the restaurant where we needed to write down all the recipes and become more structured."  

Owing to the focus on fresh produce, the menu is always changing, with favourites such as cheesecake, falafel (with differing seasonings), and freshly baked breads and cakes always on offer. Srulovich believes foodies in the UK capital appreciate his restaurant's consistency and its focus on top-notch meals. "I think diners in London are so open and so varied, and really appreciative of good quality."

Competition on the rise

Of course, with great demand comes great supply – and cut-throat competition. Although the survey found that independent outlets outnumbered group sites by five to one, it still attributed the growth in Middle Eastern food to the opening of some chain restaurants, in particular the Lebanese brand Comptoir Libanais, which has more than 20 sites.

Al Waha's Antabli says the quality has gone down as more restaurants open. He fears the subtleties of Levantine food are being lost as people cut corners, and he believes that only by sticking to authentic ways of preparing food will the best dishes be served. "The quality has gone down enormously without any doubt … they [restaurateurs] come in here and they don't know the difference between a fried kibbeh and a fried falafel.

"When I talk about competition, I'm not just talking about quality and prices, either," he continues. "I'm also talking about it in the sense that if you are living in Hampstead and you've got two or three ­Lebanese restaurants there, you are not going to travel to me. If you are living in Camden Town, it is just across the road. Before there were fewer restaurants, so people would come from Hampstead, people would come from Wimbledon to eat with you because you are good. But nowadays they don't. Arabic restaurants have popped up everywhere."

Fortunately, supporting Al Waha thus far is a local, non-Arab clientele who eat at the restaurant year-round and ensure it stays afloat. Antabli estimates that 80 per cent of his customers are not from the Arabian Gulf or North Africa. As such, his restaurant does not have to depend on the summer months when people from the Middle East come to visit. "And thank God," he says, "because otherwise we would not be able to survive."

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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

Who is Allegra Stratton?

 

  • Previously worked at The Guardian, BBC’s Newsnight programme and ITV News
  • Took up a public relations role for Chancellor Rishi Sunak in April 2020
  • In October 2020 she was hired to lead No 10’s planned daily televised press briefings
  • The idea was later scrapped and she was appointed spokeswoman for Cop26
  • Ms Stratton, 41, is married to James Forsyth, the political editor of The Spectator
  • She has strong connections to the Conservative establishment
  • Mr Sunak served as best man at her 2011 wedding to Mr Forsyth
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What went into the film

25 visual effects (VFX) studios

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1,000 VFX artists

3,000 technicians

10 Concept artists, 25 3D designers

New sound technology, named 4D SRL

 

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WHAT IS GRAPHENE?

It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But when they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 

The biog:

From: Wimbledon, London, UK

Education: Medical doctor

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PROFILE OF INVYGO

Started: 2018

Founders: Eslam Hussein and Pulkit Ganjoo

Based: Dubai

Sector: Transport

Size: 9 employees

Investment: $1,275,000

Investors: Class 5 Global, Equitrust, Gulf Islamic Investments, Kairos K50 and William Zeqiri

PROFILE

Name: Enhance Fitness 

Year started: 2018 

Based: UAE 

Employees: 200 

Amount raised: $3m 

Investors: Global Ventures and angel investors 

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How much do leading UAE’s UK curriculum schools charge for Year 6?
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England: 277 & 19-0

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Defence review at a glance

• Increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 but given “turbulent times it may be necessary to go faster”

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• Invest in the resilience of military space systems.

• Number of active reserves should be increased by 20%

• More F-35 fighter jets required in the next decade

• New “hybrid Navy” with AUKUS submarines and autonomous vessels

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Director: Joseph Kosinski

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Tearful appearance

Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday. 

Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow. 

She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.

A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.

The five pillars of Islam
Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Pharaoh's curse

British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.

What can victims do?

Always use only regulated platforms

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Report to local authorities

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Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence

THE BIO

Favourite author - Paulo Coelho 

Favourite holiday destination - Cuba 

New York Times or Jordan Times? NYT is a school and JT was my practice field

Role model - My Grandfather 

Dream interviewee - Che Guevara