Lunchtime Legends: Claudia Roden with Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich of Honey Co
Channel: British Library
Date: 2021-06-02

Chefs recreate their favourite dish, while reflecting on the shared language of food, friendship and the legacy that cooks and food writers can offer generations following in their footsteps. In this edition, Claudia Roden, a pioneering writer and expert on Middle Eastern and Jewish food, meets Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich of much loved restaurant Honey & Co. Together they make baba ganoush and talk about Claudia’s career and how attitudes to food have transformed since the 1960s.

Claudia Roden is a food writer who was born in Egypt. She specialises in the food of the Middle East and the Mediterranean and in Jewish food. Her books have won many awards. The publication of A Book of Middle Eastern Food in 1968 is said to have revolutionised Western attitudes to the cuisines of the Middle East and North Africa. Its influence was recognised in 1992 when she received the Glenfiddich Trophy 'In celebration of a unique contribution to the food that we eat in Britain today'. In the US, in 2010, the book was inducted in the James Beard Hall of fame for the influence it has had on food in America.

Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich have become known for serving up delicious Middle Eastern food using the best ingredients they can get our hands on. They opened their first restaurant Honey & Co in 2012, followed by Honey & Smoke and the deli Honey & Spice. Their debut book, Honey & Co: The Cookbook (2015), was named ‘Cookbook of the Year’ by The Sunday Times. Their new book Chasing Smoke: Cooking over fire around the Levant is out on13 May 2021 (Pavilion Books). Read their weekly recipe column in the FT Weekend Magazine.