The book is a celebration of – and an elegy to – the Syria that Imad was forced to leave behind. He was a very successful businessman and chef in Damascus, but his opposition to Assad meant that it was no longer safe for him nor his family for him to remain. Interspersed with the recipes is the story of how he came to London – a tale that mirrors that of so many desperate refugees seeking asylum here. People often ask ‘Why Britain, and not some other safe country?’. Imad’s response is that 1) he already spoke fluent English, and did not feel at his age he could learn a new language to the same proficiency required to integrate into the new country; 2) he already had family living in Northern England. He has now become a British citizen, and his wife and children have been able to join him.

After enduring a three-month journey to the UK, leaving his wife, three daughters and a restaurant in Damascus, he found cooking for 400 people provided a taste of home and a reminder of who he was.

This is clearly a book that’s been designed to demonstrate how easy it is to recreate traditional Syrian dishes in a domestic kitchen. Throughout, the recipes are simple and straightforward, with almost all the ingredients obtainable in your local supermarket. The front cover calls it a ‘love letter from Damascus to London’, which is apt. Syrian cuisine remains relatively unexplored in the UK, and Imad’s Syrian Kitchen ​offers a vibrant introduction to it. Amid this is an extensive series of recipes that offer a bustling tour of Syrian cuisine. Many of the dishes that have become signatures at Alarnab’s London restaurant feature, including the falafel, which are strikingly shaped with hole in the middle for a ‘crispier texture’. There are six chapters to the book in total, covering spice mixes, recipe basics, starters, mains, desserts and drinks. There are a lot of very nice photographs of the completed recipes, and also some of the preparations and intermediary stages, where extra help might be needed. Imad Alarnab says his new life began while he was stranded for 64 days in Calais as a Syrian refugee in 2015. In the book he shares traditional Syrian dishes that form the basis of his cooking at the restaurant. The first chapter features spice mixes, such as dukkah, Baharat and shish taouk, while the second focuses on the basics, including the plain bulgur needed in the recipes for tabbouleh and mujadara, or a perfect tahini sauce which Alarnab says he uses "for everything... it's more like a seasoning for us".

The copy of the book I have is subtitled “A Love Letter from Damascus to London”, and it is book showing the deep affection the author has for his homeland of Syria, and his gratitude to Britain for giving himself and his family asylum here. He expresses this love and affection through his cooking – gifting London with his successful restaurant, and now with his cookbook, containing favourite recipes, and notes on Syrian culture and its relationship to its food. With a lot of help from my husband, I have made fourteen of the recipes – and have plans to try more. Only one recipe had an ingredient I was not able to get: sour cherry molasses for the ‘Saroja’ (fried baby aubergines with cheeses). My favourite recipes were ‘Katif Ghanam’ (slow cooked marinated lamb shoulder baked in a parcel with herbs, carrots, potatoes and onion), ‘Mujadara’ (bulgar wheat and brown lentil salad) and ‘Muhammara’ (a red pepper and walnut chunky paste). We are having friends over next week, and I plan to serve these recipes to them. They will also be cooked many times in the future, In some respects, the recipes in Imad Alarnab’s debut cookbook, named after his recently relocated Kingly Court restaurant in London’s Soho​​, are secondary to the author’s story of journeying as a refugee from his hometown of Damascus in Syria to London in 2015. “Being a refugee is exhausting,” he writes, emotionally, at one point. “It’s emotional. It’s depressing. It involves so much waiting, unable to do anything, completely at the mercy of a constantly changing series of people who mostly don’t seem to care.” Alarnab has told his story many times before​​ to journalists and on TV, but this is the first time he’s really been given the space to explain the whole saga: from his life as a restaurateur in Damascus to being forced to flee and journey through Europe to the UK; navigating the UK’s long and debilitating immigration process; his fight to bring his family to the UK from Syria; opening his first restaurant in London; and, finally, reflecting on what it means to be a refugee today’s world.Alarnab’s testimony is split into nine sections interspersed within the different recipe chapters of the book. His writing throughout is frank, soulful and brimming with raw emotion. An entry midway through sees him reflecting on his relationship with his mother, who died in Syria less than two months after he arrived in the UK. Later on, he talks of the frustrations of Syrian refugees, who believe the plight of their countrymen have been forgotten by many in the West. And in a final message, he writes tenderly of needing more people to use their voice to call for greater support and protection for those displaced across the globe.