How Honey & Co cook up their menu when the oven is switched off

Itamar [Srulovich, Packer's husband and co-owner of Honey & Co] rode past a corner site with big windows during lockdown – it was a former Co-op just off Tottenham Court Road where the council had pedestrianised nearby streets. It had elevators for deliveries and a huge 150 sq m of space downstairs, and it was walking or cycling distance from our other London sites, so it just made sense.

So Honey & Co Daily is your bakery production hub now?

Yes, I moved my bakery team of 10 into the production kitchen downstairs in spring 2023 and we now produce all the baked goods for Honey & Co Daily and our four other sites. We will also start using the space to do other labour-intensive techniques such as making kibbeh and stuffing vine leaves.

We also opened the deli and restaurant upstairs in the autumn, which has a separate open kitchen where six chefs work on sandwich and pie fillings, offering a breakfast and lunch, and plating up our new dinner service.

Your dinner service is the new Daily Nightly menu? How did you come up with that?

When we opened the Honey and Co Daily café it was only open during the day, but we had always been in discussions about evening service. It was obvious at some stage that we would do an evening service to justify the rent in a central London location.

The menu is created around dishes that are cooked using the residual heat from the bakery ovens after they are turned off in the afternoon. It takes inspiration from the communal ovens we've come across on our travels through the Middle East, from Turkey through to Egypt and Morocco, where the oven is traditionally the heart of the neighbourhood. People bring their trays of homemade food to cook slowly in the residual heat of the oven in the local bakery.

But really, it's been the way we've always cooked since our first Honey & Co, where it was just Itamar and I cooking in a tiny kitchen – we now employ around 120 people. Back then we would turn off the ovens and throw in a shoulder of lamb to slow-cook. But the main driver today was to use the space and the ovens and justify the increase in energy prices.

So you don't actually cook any dishes until the ovens switch off?

Our ovens switch on at 6am and we cook all our bread in them until 2pm when we switch them off and then use the residual heat to cook the evening dishes, which we reheat before service. The ovens remain hot hours after they've been turned off, so once those evening dishes are ready, we then use the last of the heat to dry out tomatoes and oranges.

Describe some of the dishes on the menu.

The Daily Nightly menu is available every day from 6pm as a set menu [£37 for two courses, £45 with dessert], while dishes can also be ordered à la carte. There's slow-cooked lamb with aubergines, served with a fluffy baked pitta which are puffed up just before service. Or shin of beef, the bone marrow and rich tissue slowly melting to a silky, sticky sauce, sweetened with quince, carrots and spices. We also braise greens slowly for pastry fillings, and slow-cook chickpeas until they're melting.

It's a bit different from our other Honey & Co sites because it's very homely cooking and reminiscent of what we would eat in the Middle East. It's comforting. We're about to change the menu for spring and shift away from the winter dishes for things that are lighter – some salads and slow-cooked chicken thighs, which we can shred to make shawarma.

What are your favourite dishes?

The lamb is my favourite – we'll always have some sort of lamb dish on the menu – but the bakers potatoes in the side dishes are also popular – we slice potatoes and mix them with harissa and feta, topped with a sprinkling of kashkaval to crisp it up. We then let the potatoes sit in the oven for a couple of hours until meltingly soft and full of flavour. We also slow-cook a broth made from chicken bones, spices, vegetables and liquid and poach our kibbeh dumplings in that.

From the menu

Starters: £14

• Squid and prawn escabeche on toast
• Tunisian stack – preserved lemon and harissa tuna, potatoes, red peppers and poached egg
• Citrus-cured salmon with blood orange, pistachios and dill

Mains: £25

• Glazed aubergine steak with red pepper and pumpkin seed purée, burnt hispi cabbage
• Kibbeh dumplings – spiced beef wrapped in semolina pastry in a fragrant broth, roasted
• Chreime – seabream fillets braised in rich tomato stew with fennel salad and zehug
• Half roast chicken served with the bakers' potatoes and leaves (for two to share) £50

Dessert

• Honey & Co cheesecake £10.5
• Knafeh (for two to share) – Kadaif pastry with sweet and salty filling, in orange blossom syrup, served hot £16.5

Recipe: lamb and aubergine stew

Serves 2

• 450g lamb neck, cut into large dice
• ½tsp salt
• ½tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1tbs olive oil
• 1 aubergine, cut into large cubes (about 350g)
• 1 large tomato, cut into large cubes (about 120g)
• 1 small red onion, peeled and cut into wedges (about 100g)
• 6 whole cloves of garlic, peeled
• ¼-½ small red chilli, thinly sliced
• 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 150ml water
• 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
• 2 fresh pitta bread

Season the lamb cubes with the salt and pepper. Heat a large pan over a medium-high heat, add the olive oil and diced lamb, and sear the meat all over. Once it has browned (after about 5-6 minutes), add the aubergine, tomato, onion and garlic.

Cover the pan and leave to steam for five minutes, then remove the lid, mix everything around and add the chilli and thyme. Reduce the heat to low and cook slowly for about 15 minutes before pouring in the water and pomegranate molasses.

Continue cooking on a low heat for 50-60 minutes until all the vegetables have broken down and the meat is so soft you can tear it apart with your fork. At Honey & Co Daily we like to serve the stew baked inside a pitta bread, but you can also serve with warmed bread on the side.