The finest humous in England: Arabica food boxes reviewed

Restaurant-goers who cannot let go of restaurants — for professional or other reasons — are floating on a sea of takeaway boxes, which have none of the glamour. Which of us fell in love on a takeaway? I wish I did not have to write about them, nor you to read about them, but if this is the worst thing that happened to you this year — packaging — it is not so bad.

I have already begun a small counter–revolution by shopping at the greengrocers and the cheesemongers, and I suggest you do the same. Even so, they are faintly mesmerising by volume: a box-themed version of the Rumpelstiltskin myth, which is familiar to all children, and adults with an eating disorder. Perhaps it is a metaphor: we float on glut and are lucky, if not happy.

I have eaten many food boxes this year and my favourite is from the restaurant group Arabica. Perhaps this is coincidence, because I am not good at Middle Eastern food. Tabbouleh salad needs time I do not have and more parsley than I can find. I love this food, though, more than any other: for its colour and vitality; for its evocation of heat on ancient cities; for its salads. I often daydream about the falafel shack near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, where a man forms and fries falafel in front of your eyes, throws it into pitta bread with chips and pretends to remember you from your previous visit a decade past. That is a restaurateur of genius, not Keith McNally of Balthazar.

Before pandemic I would go to Shepherd Market in Mayfair, a district that has yet to be ruined, to eat at Sofra, which is Turkish, or Iran Restaurant, which is self-evident.