A Damascene moment in London: Imad’s Syrian Kitchen reviewed

Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is an eyrie off Carnaby Street, a once-famous road which seems to exist nowadays to sell trainers to tourists who have fallen, as if by wormhole, out of the Liberty homeware department with its pathological dependence on florals. No matter. Nearby, in Kingly Court, which is like Covent Garden before it fell to Dior and Apple, more interesting things happen: the sort of things that London, so sunken, needs. Kingly Court is charming because it invokes an ancient coaching inn — London was once filled with them — and it is, due to the presence of independent eating houses, still palpably bright, pleasing and alive. The restaurant is likewise cheerful: wooden floors; pale walls; blue windowsills; blue tiles; a beamed ceiling; photographs of Damascus. It is so cheerful it does not really feel like it belongs in London, which now invites heavier things.

This is deceptive though. There is a story here about people and food: a narrative which helps to explain why Britain has, at least for now — until pandemic and the impact of Brexit is spelled out in ink and absent waiting staff — the most thrilling restaurant sector in Europe. That is something to cherish with stomach and mind. Greed at least should make you think so. Mouths can contain self-interest. Some have nothing but.

The owner Imad Alarnab greets us happily, but he is only here because of war. In 2012 he owned three restaurants in Damascus, and a clutch of coffee shops and juice bars. When the war began in earnest in 2015, they were destroyed within six days. Alarnab was smuggled to Lebanon, Turkey, North Macedonia and then France, where he cooked Syrian cuisine for up to 400 refugees each day.