Chicken with spelt, figs and walnuts. Sweet potatoes with spices and kale and oranges. Zucchini with cherry tomatoes and broken pasta. This is the cooking of Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer, co-owners of Honey & Co. in London. These are not Michelin chefs. “Never wanted anything
fancy…we wanted the home food, the Mama’s food.” And that is exactly what you get at Honey & Co.—a place where you can come in and have “a joyous little moment of the day.”

Life and cooking are inseparable for Itamar and Sarit. During Covid,
they danced in their kitchen. When asked why, they said, “You know,
what is the place that we go to, for joy, for happiness, for succor, and that was, of course, in our kitchen…cooking and feeding people and each other.”

They have no patience for a perfectly diced onion or turning vegetables
with the attendant waste. Instead, they build flavor. They fry spices to
start a recipe, use water instead of stock (why cook meat in stock?), and
they are in love with one-dish meals such as traybakes, dirty rice or frittatas. Their secret lies in their ability to combine flavors and ingredients. Corn and fennel chowder. Melon, cucumber and prawn salad. And they’re not afraid to learn new techniques such as stir-frying papaya, inspired by the cooking of Malaysia. And they have no problem reinventing the threadworn—take Shakshuka—it’s just a dish with eggs cooked on top, offering an endless series of suppers. Or Posset, an old English dessert with boiled cream, sugar and an acid such as lemon juice. (They make theirs with pink grapefruit.) And their Tahini Cake with Lemon and White Chocolate may be the single best cake I have ever tasted.

At the most basic, however, Itamar and Sarit are inspired by simplicity.
A Jerusalem Bean Soup with onions, tomato paste, spices, a can
of peeled tomatoes and a jar of white beans. Chicken burgers. Vanilla and peach jelly. Complicated food is almost a sign of failure, the inability
to get to the heart of a recipe, to understand the true meaning of
good cooking.

The true secret to their food may be their abiding love for each
other. Itamar says of Sarit, “She is one of the best cooks who has ever
lived. Whatever you’re going to do, it’s going to be perfect.” Either those
are the words of one extremely well-trained husband or, as I believe, an
expression of almost Victorian adoration. It is a cliché to suggest that Honey & Co.’s cooking is nourished by the mutual love of its founders
but, when two cooks dance in the kitchen, well, it’s hard to come to
any other conclusion.

Chris Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."