Restaurant in London, United Kingdom

Honey & Smoke

Name: Honey & Smoke
Address: 216 Great Portland St, London W1W 5QW, United Kingdom, London, GB
Telephone: +44 20 7388 6175

275Pearl Points

Easy to book, hard to fault.

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About Honey & Smoke

Honey & Smoke is a reliable, easy-to-book Israeli grill restaurant in Fitzrovia from the Ottolenghi-trained duo behind Honey & Co. The sharing-plate format suits groups of four or more best, and the coal-fired meze and grill plates deliver consistent quality backed by three consecutive Opinionated About Dining Casual Europe rankings. Book a week out for weekdays; two weeks for weekend dinner.

Should You Book Honey & Smoke?

Honey & Smoke is easy to book and worth booking. This is the rare Fitzrovia restaurant where you can usually secure a table within a few days, sometimes same-week, for both lunch and dinner. The question is not whether you can get in — it is whether the format suits your occasion. For a relaxed group meal built around sharing plates, grilled meat and fish, and a genuinely interesting wine list, it delivers consistently. For a formal celebration or a business dinner that requires a quieter, more structured room, you will want to look elsewhere.

The Room and the Experience

Honey & Smoke occupies a large, canteen-style space on Great Portland Street: tiled floors, plain square tables, plastic chairs, and enough covers to generate real noise on a busy evening. The energy is deliberately casual and the sound level reflects that. By 8 PM on a Friday or Saturday, expect a buzzy, high-decibel room. If you are planning a date or a celebration where conversation matters, arrive early — the 6 PM slot gives you the room at its leading before it fills. Midweek lunch is the quietest window across the week, and the kitchen runs the same menu, so you lose nothing on quality by going then.

The format is communal and sharing-focused, which suits groups of three to six well. Two people can eat comfortably, but you will want four or more to move through a proper spread of the meze, grill plates, and desserts without over-ordering. There is no private dining room in the database record, so if your occasion requires an exclusive or semi-private space, this is not the venue , consider that a hard constraint before booking for a board dinner or a proposal. What it does well is deliver a warm, animated atmosphere that makes a birthday dinner or a celebratory group lunch feel natural rather than forced.

The Food and Credentials

Honey & Smoke is run by Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, who built their reputation at Ottolenghi before opening Honey & Co. The cooking draws on Israeli and Middle Eastern tradition, with the grill doing most of the heavy lifting on the main plates. The menu moves through seasonal meze , houmous, baba ganoush, salt-baked beetroot with yoghurt , before arriving at coal-fired meat, fish, and vegetable dishes. The feta and honey cheesecake on a kadaif pastry base is the dish most consistently mentioned by repeat visitors. The wine list is built around Mediterranean producers and fits the food well.

On the awards side, Honey & Smoke has appeared in the Opinionated About Dining Casual Europe rankings for three consecutive years: Recommended in 2023, ranked 446th in 2024, and 484th in 2025. That trajectory is a useful signal , the restaurant is holding its position in a competitive category rather than climbing, which suggests a settled, reliable operation rather than a kitchen pushing into new territory. Google reviewers give it 4.4 across more than 1,100 ratings, which is a strong signal of consistent execution at volume. For Israeli cooking of comparable ambition in other cities, 12 Chairs in New York City and Ash'Kara in Denver offer useful reference points for the style.

Booking and Practical Details

Booking difficulty is low. The restaurant is closed on Sundays. Lunch service runs Tuesday through Saturday from noon; dinner runs Monday through Saturday from 5 PM, with last orders at 10:30 PM. Monday is dinner-only, which makes it a useful option when the rest of the week fills up. Book a week out for a standard weekday table; two weeks out for weekend dinner if you have a specific time in mind. The address is 216 Great Portland St, London W1W 5QW, a short walk from Great Portland Street station.

Price range is not confirmed in the venue data, but the format , shared meze plus grill plates , positions Honey & Smoke in the accessible mid-range for London's restaurant scene. It is not a cheap eat, but it is significantly more affordable than the formal dining options nearby. For context on how it sits relative to the wider London restaurant scene, see our full London restaurants guide. If you are planning a broader trip, our London hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide cover the rest of the city.

Quick reference: 216 Great Portland St W1W 5QW | Closed Sunday | Lunch from noon Tue–Sat | Dinner from 5 PM Mon–Sat | Booking difficulty: Easy

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I wear to Honey & Smoke?

Dress casually. The room has tiled floors, plastic chairs, and plain square tables — this is a canteen-style space, not a white-tablecloth venue. Jeans and a clean top are perfectly in keeping. There is no dress code pressure here.

Is Honey & Smoke good for a special occasion?

It works for a low-key celebration rather than a formal milestone dinner. The food is inventive and the OAD Casual Europe ranking (484 in 2025) signals genuine quality, but the canteen format and shared-table vibe mean it reads more as a lively birthday dinner than an anniversary splurge. For a grander occasion in London, somewhere like The Ledbury better fits the brief.

Does Honey & Smoke handle dietary restrictions?

The menu is structured around Middle Eastern meze and coal-fired dishes, with strong vegetable options including baba ganoush, salt-baked beetroot, and mushroom shawarma — making it more vegetable-forward than most grill restaurants. Specific allergy or dietary accommodation details are not in the available venue record, so check the venue's official channels before booking if you have strict requirements.

What are alternatives to Honey & Smoke in London?

For Israeli-influenced sharing plates in London, Honey & Co (the sibling restaurant, now on Lamb's Conduit Street) offers a more intimate setting with similar roots. If you want coal-fired cooking with a broader Middle Eastern scope, Berber & Q in Haggerston is the closest stylistic comparison. Honey & Smoke sits between those two in scale: bigger than Honey & Co, tighter in focus than Berber & Q.

What should a first-timer know about Honey & Smoke?

Order the meze to start and budget for multiple shared plates — the format rewards sharing across the table rather than ordering individually. The feta and honey cheesecake on kadaif pastry base is the dessert to order; do not skip it. Booking difficulty is low, so a few days' notice is usually enough Tuesday through Saturday, but the restaurant is closed on Sundays.

Is lunch or dinner better at Honey & Smoke?

Lunch runs Tuesday through Saturday from noon and is the lower-pressure option with the same menu. Dinner runs until 10:30 pm and tends to be livelier given the canteen-style room. If you want a quieter experience, a weekday lunch is the call; if you want the full atmosphere the space is designed for, go at dinner. Monday is dinner-only.

Location

216 Great Portland St, London W1W 5QW, United Kingdom

London, United Kingdom

Compare Honey & Smoke

Getting a Table: Honey & Smoke and Alternatives

Venue	Cuisine	Price	Booking Difficulty
Honey & Smoke	Israeli		Easy
CORE by Clare Smyth	Modern British	££££	Unknown
Restaurant Gordon Ramsay	Contemporary European, French	££££	Unknown
Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library	Modern French	££££	Unknown
The Ledbury	Modern European, Modern Cuisine	££££	Unknown
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal	Modern British, Traditional British	££££	Unknown

How Honey & Smoke stacks up against the competition.

Also Consider

CORE by Clare Smyth, Modern British, ££££
Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Contemporary European, French, ££££
Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library, Modern French, ££££
The Ledbury, Modern European, Modern Cuisine, ££££
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Modern British, Traditional British, ££££

Honey & Smoke operates in a completely different tier from the formal London dining venues nearby. CORE by Clare Smyth, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library, The Ledbury, and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal are all ££££ operations with tasting menus, significant booking lead times, and formal room standards. Honey & Smoke is not competing with them on those terms, and that is the point. If your evening calls for a structured fine dining experience, a private room, or a tasting menu format, none of those needs are met here.

Where Honey & Smoke wins is accessibility and value. It is significantly easier to book than any of those venues, the price per head is lower, and the experience of a shared Middle Eastern spread around a communal table is a fundamentally different proposition from a tasting menu. For a casual celebration or a group dinner where the food is serious but the atmosphere is relaxed, it outperforms a formal room at twice the price. If you want Israeli and Middle Eastern cooking with more refinement and a quieter room, Nopi is the closer comparison: same culinary tradition, more polished service, higher price point.

For a splurge with serious cooking credentials in London, CORE by Clare Smyth and The Ledbury are the most defensible choices. For a mid-range group dinner with no booking anxiety and food that consistently earns good reviews, Honey & Smoke is the practical answer in Fitzrovia. The OAD Casual Europe ranking confirms it sits in a credible position within its category, not a destination on its own but a reliable, well-executed option that suits the occasion when the occasion calls for casual rather than formal.