Christmas at home with Honey & Co – where simple bakes and traditional turkey rules (but no Paxo stuffing, please)

The Honeys are home for Christmas. Husband-and-wife chefs Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer, aka The Honeys, are owners of London restaurants Honey & Co and Honey & Smoke, as well as deli Honey & Spice. They are the authors of three bestselling cookery books, with a fourth in the pipeline.

December is a manic month for restaurants, but the couple are looking forward to welcoming friends to their south London home, a light and airy flat at the top of a Georgian terrace, on the 25th. “Christmas orphans who just want to eat something and drink something,” ­explains Packer. “It’s very casual.”

The couple both grew up in Israel, where, Srulovich says, “there were always people around. It’s not like a dinner party, it’s just food and people, a constant flow.” Packer agrees. “I think it is an Israeli thing… very droppy-in.”

Both Packer and Srulovich are Jewish, though they don’t keep kosher or regard themselves as religious. Packer’s parents are British, and “ours was a very English household,” she explains. “We would have a roast turkey, sometimes for Passover too. My parents would do a Christmas panto every year for the kids at Hanukkah.” The eight-day festival of light falls around the same time as Christmas. Since arriving in the UK 15 years ago, they say, “this country has been so good to us and we feel we belong here in a very real way”.

Over by the oven, Packer rolls cheese in pieces of filo pastry for their recipe. They look blissfully easy to make. “That’s the point. You need a canapé that doesn’t make you want to cry.” Packer is the baker of the pair, and a former pastry chef for Yotam ­Ottolenghi. “I can do just four bakes,” admits Srulovich. “I’m waiting for that repertoire to expand!” says Packer.

The couple have collaborated closely from the start. Honey & Co opened in 2012, hardly more than a café, tiny tables crammed together on the Moroccan tiled floor, with just Srulovich, Packer and one staff member, Rachel. Rachel now runs the front of house there and at Honey & Smoke, which opened in 2016, and also masterminds the big Christmas dinner they cook for elderly people living near the restaurants.

“It’s super traditional. Turkey, gravy, roasties and mashed potato, parsnips. We aren’t even allowed to use fresh herbs,” Packer says, offering around a plate of crisp, hot, cheese ­parcels, ends twisted like Quality Street wrappers. The couple did rebel when Paxo stuffing was suggested. “We make one with sourdough bread, sausages, sage and onion.”

Tucking into a Baileys-rich mousse cake, whose recipe is shared below, we drink Turkish coffee out of beakers made by Srulovich. The couple go to pottery classes together every week, and his cups are pleasingly sculptural and angular, while Packer makes satiny white pot-bellied mugs that fit snugly in the hand. Like the Honeys themselves, strikingly different but at home together.