Honey & Smoke

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? The room is casual , tiled floors, plastic chairs, canteen aesthetic. Smart casual is the appropriate register, but there is no dress code to observe. Jeans are entirely in keeping. If you are coming from a work event and arrive suited, you will not look out of place, but nobody is dressing up for this room.
• Is Honey & Smoke good for a special occasion? Yes, with caveats. A birthday dinner for four to six people in a lively, generous room works well here. The food is good enough to mark an occasion and the atmosphere is warm. It is not the right choice if you need a quiet room for a formal celebration or a meal with elderly relatives who find noise difficult. For that kind of occasion, the The Ledbury or CORE by Clare Smyth will serve you better.
• Does Honey & Smoke handle dietary restrictions? The menu's structure , meze, grilled vegetables, fish, and meat as separate components , gives it natural flexibility for pescatarians and vegetarians. The kitchen has a broad repertoire of plant-based and dairy-based dishes built into the format. If you have a specific allergy or strict dietary requirement, contact the restaurant directly before booking; phone and website details are not confirmed in the current venue data.
• What are alternatives to Honey & Smoke in London? For Israeli and Middle Eastern cooking in London, Nopi offers a more polished room with similar culinary DNA and Ottolenghi provenance, at a higher price point. If you want the sharing-plate format at a comparable casual register but with different cuisine, the London mid-range has plenty of options. For fine dining with more structure and a private room option, Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library is nearby in Mayfair. If you are travelling and want to compare the Israeli restaurant category internationally, see 12 Chairs in New York City.
• What should a first-timer know about Honey & Smoke? Order across the menu rather than anchoring on one section. The meze and the grill plates are designed to work together, and skipping one half means you miss the point of the format. The feta and honey cheesecake is the dessert to order. Come hungry and with at least one other person. The room is loud when full, so set expectations accordingly. Ottolenghi-trained chefs running a casual grill room is a reliable formula, and the OAD rankings across three years confirm it is being executed consistently.
• Is lunch or dinner better at Honey & Smoke? Lunch is better if atmosphere is less important to you than value and ease. The kitchen runs the same menu, the room is quieter, and you are more likely to get your preferred time. Dinner is better if the lively, buzzy room is part of what you are after , it is more animated, particularly Thursday through Saturday. Monday dinner-only is worth knowing about if weekdays are your only option and Tuesday–Friday is booked out.