Imad Alarnab – Food for Thought

A bubbly, charismatic and affable restauranteur, Imad Alarnab was the man about town in Damascus, Syria. Through his monopoly of restaurants, juice bars and cafés, Imad drew in ravenous families and friends, filling them with traditional fare from kibbeh to fattoush and kebabs to baklava. But when the Syrian war broke in 2011, reaching the capital of Damascus in 2012, Imad lost the empire he had spent a decade building in just a week. All of his business, his home and his car were fatalities to the stream of relentless bombings that had burnt chunks of his city to ashes. 

In search of a better life for him and his family, Imad decided to flee his war-torn homeland four years later to embark on a treacherous route to Europe. “It’s not easy to travel as a Syrian,” he says to me over the phone, “I know highly skilled friends who have been trying to fly out of Syria to find places to work, and they have been unsuccessful — that’s why I stayed for four years. In 2015, I realised I had had enough and decided to do whatever it took to keep my family safe even if it meant a dangerous journey.”

For three perilous months, Imad was smuggled in lorries from Damascus to Lebanon and then onto Turkey before taking a jam-packed boat crossing to Greece. “I remember reading on the boat that there was supposed to be nine onboard, and I counted, and we were 56. The coastguards kept pushing more-and-more people on, from elderly people to very young children — it was terrifying.”

Imad would then travel via Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Germany before ending up in Calais, France, where he stayed for 64 days — sometimes sleeping on the steps of a church and surviving off Snicker’s bars for sustenance. During his time at Calais, he picked back up his culinary skills to cook for fellow refugees — up to 400 of them a time — with just a picnic stove, bowl and a knife.

In October, Imad finally arrived in the UK with only £12 in his pocket — just enough for a bus far up to Doncaster where his sister lived. During this time, he worked as a car washer and car salesman to support his family but kept thinking about how much he missed hospitality. “I started inviting people to dinner to ask their opinion about Syrian cuisine,” he recalls, “what’s good and bad for the market. I was surprised by the response and wanted to launch a pop-up before an actual business.”

Through working with the refugee charity Choose Love, Imad launched his first pop-up on Columbia Road, Bethnal Green, in March 2017. “It was such a proud moment for me,” he says. “You know when you’ve been working on something for such a long time, and then it finally happens, you somehow forget about everything else that happened before.”

Choose Love helped raise enough money through crowdfunding so that Imad could have his own permanent restaurant in London: Imad’s Syrian Kitchen. Opening a restaurant during the pandemic was never going to be an easy feat, but if anyone could survive another obstacle, it would be the resilient Imad. In May 2021, they finally opened their doors.

When I visited Imad’s Syrian Kitchen, perched at the top of Kingly Court in Soho, Imad greeted me with a hug so warm it felt as if we were long-lost friends. My guest and I were then ushered to the table and sandwiched between people forking away at vibrant plates of baba ghanoush and hummus, adorned with chickpeas, pomegranate seeds, sumac and drizzled with unsparing amounts of oil. After ordering our fair share of mezze, we were longing to try Imad’s saucer-shaped falafel — one of his signature dishes.

More often than not and especially when store-bought, you come across falafels that taste like mouthfuls of sawdust. But, Imad’s were a thing a beauty — perfectly crispy on the outside, softly tender within. He tells me they are made by a simple recipe involving chickpeas seasoned with cumin and coriander, shaped into a flattish circle with a hole in the middle, studded with sesame seeds, fried and crowned with slithers of red onion and sumac — a streetfood staple to sink your teeth into.

Other crowd-pleasing dishes on the small menu are the za’atar salad made with halloumi noodles, watermelon and rocket, the “Sharihat Ghanam” of lamb fillet, sun-dried tomatoes and pitta bread, and the “Shish Tawook”, grilled chicken strips with paprika crisps and tomato mayo.

“We wanted to keep the menu very simple and small,” says Imad. “We change it often as I want our regulars to come back and see something new and experience different flavours but we also like keeping tradition. For example, the falafel is made in a shape very traditional in Damascus and remains the original recipe. After all, if you have something good, why would you bother changing it?”

The same applies to their Syrian Ice Cream, which they offer as part of the dessert menu in the kitchen. When the ice cream lands on our table, it feels as if Imad had personally plucked a bit out of a cloud, churned it, rolled it in pistachio nuts, frozen it and crowned with angel-hair candyfloss.  

“It is the only ice cream we have in Damascus; even the other cities don’t really know about it,” he tells me. “We don’t even use machines, we do it all by hand, and the secret to its stickiness is the mastic gum, a sap-like substance that comes from a Grecian tree — it’s very delicate to deal with, but it makes it taste great.”

Eating at Imad’s Syrian Kitchen feels like you have been granted exclusive access to someone’s home abode. The restaurant is an intimate, white-washed room that could easily pass for a blue-kissed taverna by the Aegean Sea. Dotted around the walls are also a series of photographs recalling moments, places and events that brought Imad to where he is today — from pictures from birthdays spent in London to a picture of a doorknocker from his parent’s house in Damascus — which only elevate the venue’s homely feel. 

“I didn’t want to do another Middle Eastern restaurant where there are lots of decorations hanging around the place,” states Imad. “I wanted to present by family house in Syria — white, with a touch of blue, real wood. I’m not only welcoming my customers in, I consider them all my friends. The restaurant is me, and I want them to be able to feel welcome within that.”

For Imad’s last ever supper, he picks a starter of baba ghanoush and pitta, a main course of Sharihat Ghanam, a pudding of baklava, and to drink a “Bolo” (a traditional Syrian drink made with lemon and mint). 

To date, Imad has raised more than £200,00 for Choose Love and has pledged a pound from every bill at Imad’s Syrian Kitchen will be donated to the organisation, which supports refugees and displaced people across Europe. 

At a time when the world is facing the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War owing to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we could all do with hearing more stories like Imad’s and just how important a safe passage of journey, a place to reside and a chance to begin again means to people who have been displaced so abruptly by war.   

“Since I lost my business and home, I started to appreciate every small thing,” reflects Imad. “Sometimes you take it all for granted, you’ll only appreciate your bed when you have slept on a sofa for months or you’ll only appreciate food when you have gone for days without it. I was given a second chance and I was very grateful — everyone deserves that.”

Imad Alarnab’s recipe for Syrian Falafel

Ingredients

500g dried chickpeas
1 medium white onion
4 cloves of garlic
2 tbs dried coriander
1 tbs cumin
1 tbs salt
4 tbs white sesame
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

Soak the chickpeas overnight, change the water once, and rinse when ready in the morning

Add the chickpeas to a mincer if available, if not, a food processor will do and blend. Be careful to ensure the consistency is thick.

Add all the rest of the ingredients and mix together well. 

Shape them, and deep fry in vegetable oil until golden brown.