Homali Chocolate Walnut Cookie

Hadi wrote back

Chris — a first order, and you met both halves of the kitchen at once: the Lamb on the slow side, the Mix Burger on the charcoal side, Mac and Cheese Chips and a cookie to close. Fresh came back on three of the four. "Not much more you could ask for" is a generous sentence from someone who had never eaten with us before, and I will take it as the bar for your next one. Next time, try the Homali Red Chicken. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Rebecca — thank you. "Well presented" is not something people usually say about a takeaway, and it is the part of your review I keep returning to. Presentation is easy at a table, where the plate goes from the pass to you in a few steps. In a box, it has to survive a lid, a bag and a journey, and most of the time it does not. So we pack with the moment you open it in mind, not the moment it leaves us. To hear that it arrived hot and still looking the way it should means that thinking held all the way to your door. Fresh, full of flavour and generous as well — that is very nearly everything we ask of ourselves on a single order. Thank you for the recommendation, and come back soon. Next time, try the Homali Red Chicken. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Karl — a first order, and you went straight for the Mix Burger with the Homali Chips. Four tags on the burger alone, and fresh on both. "Flavours and freshness are unreal" is a big sentence for a first meal from a kitchen you did not know, and fresh is the word I most wanted to see; it is the one thing we cannot fake. You said you will 100% be back, so I will take that as a promise. Next time, try the Homali Lamb. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Sallyann — thank you. You called us a little gem, and I will take it. But the truth of that evening is that the gem in the room was not ours. Three children came in with you, and with them came something this place does not have on its own. A restaurant can be warm and well cooked and still be quiet. Children are the ones who make it sound like a home. For the length of your meal, ours did — and those of us behind the counter felt it as much as anyone at the tables. That is a gift, not something a restaurant can earn, and I wanted to thank you for it plainly. You told us next month. We will hold you to it: all five of you, the same welcome, and a table ready when you walk in. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Reza — thank you. Some evenings the food is the whole story. Yours was not one of them. You and your wife are both cooks, and we ended up talking the way people in this trade do when they find each other — about rice and saffron and patience, and the small things only other cooks notice. I enjoyed that conversation as much as anything I cooked that night. That you found the rice right and the lamb tender means more coming from two people who know exactly how hard both are to get right. I wish the two of you every good thing: health, a full table, and many years of cooking side by side. Come back whenever you like — the door is open, and the kettle is on. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Monjur — thank you. I have read a great many kind reviews since we opened, but I do not think anyone has ever ended one with a blessing before. "May you forever keep your lights on." For a small independent place, that is not a figure of speech. It is the whole wish. Anyone who has run a restaurant knows what it is to sit with the bills at the end of a month and think about the lights. That you wished it for us, unprompted, is something I will keep. You found the rice and the lamb, the pictures on the walls and even the grass underfoot, and you called it a second home. If I had been allowed only one word for what this place was built to be, that would have been it. So come back. The lights will be on. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Sarah — thank you. It is one thing to enjoy a meal; it is quite another to turn to strangers and ask them to support the place. That last line is the kindest thing in your review, and I did not expect it. A small independent kitchen lives almost entirely on sentences like that — one person telling another that it is worth the try. It was a pleasure to welcome you, your dad and your sister-in-law that Friday. And the chef will hear your thanks; even without his name, he knows it was meant for him. You said you will be back. We will be glad to see all three of you. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Jennifer — thank you. You may not have noticed, but you have just finished a sentence we started. The card that came through your door called Homali the Wirral's best-kept secret. It was a bold thing to print about ourselves, and we knew it could only ever become true if somebody opened the envelope, scanned the code, took a chance on a kitchen they had never heard of — and then said it back to us in their own words. You did exactly that. The Bacon Charcoal Burger was the one you chose, and to hear it called the best burger in a very long time, on a first order, is the whole card paying for itself. A secret only lasts until someone tells it, and you have said you will. We are glad it was you. Come back soon. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Amy — thank you. A jacket potato is the humblest thing on any menu, and that is exactly why we wanted ours taken seriously. It goes over glowing charcoal until the smoke works into the skin, long before the beef and onions and the Homali Topping go anywhere near it. Nobody expects that from a jacket potato, which is rather the point. "So much more than just your standard jacket potato" is the sentence that dish was built to earn, and you wrote it on your very first order. Hot on arrival and generous as well — the two things a first order has to get right, and I am glad this one did. Come back soon, and thank you. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Curtis — thank you. A few weeks is a long time in a small kitchen. We notice when a regular goes quiet — not as a number on a screen, but as an order we half expect on a certain kind of evening, and which does not come. So when yours came through again, we said so, on the bag, in a few lines. I did not expect those lines to find their way back here. "Won't make that mistake again" is the best answer a note like that could ever get. It was never meant as a sales line. It was meant as the plain truth: the kitchen had missed you. The Lamb and the Oreo cookie will be waiting, as they always are. Welcome back. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Kacper — thank you. "Completely by chance" is how a lot of people find us, and I have come to love it. Every guest who walks in by accident is taking a small risk on a place they know nothing about. You took it — and then you wrote this, so the next person does not have to rely on luck. One small thing, since you noticed the smoke: it is not an oven, but an open grill over real wood charcoal. That flavour cannot be added afterwards; the beef has to be cooked in it. The best burger of your life is a sentence I will be repeating to that grill for some time. As for the shout-out — thank you, truly. I will admit I read that part more than once. Food is what people come for, but the welcome is what they remember, and it is the one thing I have always wanted this place to be known for. A restaurant is only a room with a kitchen until somebody is glad you walked in. I was glad you did. And the credit is shared: the team you called friendly and attentive are the reason an ordinary evening here feels like hospitality rather than service. Next time you will not need chance to find us. Come back soon — the table is yours. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Will — thank you. Top five on the Wirral is a bigger claim than it sounds; there are a lot of good kitchens on this side of the water. To be put on that list without a doubt in your mind is not something we will take lightly. We will keep earning it.

Hadi wrote back

Judith — thank you. "Incredible value" and "lovely people" sit side by side in your review, and I think they belong together. Value is not only what is on the plate for the price; it is whether you were looked after while you ate it. A cheap meal served coldly is poor value, and a generous one served warmly is worth more than the bill says. You also noticed that we asked what you thought. We always want to know, and it is good to hear it came across as real interest rather than routine. Thank you for a lovely evening at your table. Come back soon. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Ben — thank you. Quick and good do not usually travel together. Most kitchens end up choosing one: fast food that is not quite food, or proper cooking that makes you wait. We have spent a long time arranging this kitchen so that we do not have to choose — what can be slow-cooked ahead is done properly, and what belongs on the charcoal goes on the moment you order it. Hearing "delicious" and "quick" in the same line tells me that arrangement is working. And thank you for the recommendation. For a small place, that is worth more than any advert. Come back soon. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Chloe — you noticed the bag and the note before the food, and then you set us next to the big franchises. That is exactly where my mind was the day this began. The ambition was never to be a small shop that does well on its own street; it was to stand one day alongside the names everybody knows, without giving up the part you noticed — the care that goes into a single bag. This is the beginning of Homali, not the middle of it. Customers who look closely and say what they see are what shortens that road. Thank you for being one of them. Come back soon. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Joe — thank you. The small things you listed are the ones we are never sure anybody sees. A message written on a container, a bag that keeps the heat in, a note tucked in with the order — none of that is on the menu and none of it is asked for. We do it because a takeaway arriving at somebody's door is still hospitality, even when there is no table between us. Being caught at it is a good day. The friendly face was ours, too. We deliver our own orders rather than hand the last ten minutes to a stranger, precisely so the food arrives the way it left. The rice and the lamb are the older half of this kitchen. The rice takes its butter slowly and the lamb takes its time, and neither can be hurried — which is why most takeaways do not carry them. Of everything on the menu, those two are what I would want a first-time guest to judge us on. And if the road ever brings you across to the Wirral again, you know where to find us. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Laura — thank you. What came through your door was an invitation, not an advertisement, and you took it exactly the way it was meant. We are a small kitchen a few streets from you, and we would rather introduce ourselves at your door than pay to interrupt you somewhere else. An invitation is how we ask for the first order. The food has to earn the second. Yours seems to have. Come back soon — we will be here. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Thank you — and thank you for one word in particular: always. A first visit can be luck. Always means we have not dropped it, and that is the harder thing to earn. You have also put your finger on what we are trying to be. A high street has its Chinese shop and its pizza shop, and both do their job well. We were never going to beat them at theirs. What we could do was cook something this town could not already get — slow-cooked, over real charcoal, the way it is cooked at home. On the prices: they sit where they sit on purpose. We would rather be the place you can afford on an ordinary Tuesday than the place saved for an occasion. Come back soon. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Elle — thank you. The nicest place you have ever ordered from is a heavy sentence to be handed, and we will try to keep deserving it. Glad the cookies held their own too; they are a small corner of the menu that gets more attention than its size deserves.

Hadi wrote back

Johnathon — thank you. Temperature is not a thing people usually mention, and it happens to be the one part of a delivery we can only win before the food leaves. Once the bag is with a rider it is out of our hands, so everything is decided earlier: what gets packed with what, what can wait and what cannot, which lid goes on which box. Hearing that it reached you hot is that work paying off. One thing, since this was a first order and you have us filed under burgers and hot dogs. That is fair enough — but it is half the menu. The other half is slow-cooked, and it is the half this kitchen was really built for. Worth a look next time you are not in a burger mood. Come back soon. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Ava — I do not know whether you had read our story on the website, or seen it on Instagram, before you wrote this. I find myself hoping you had not. The word you used is the word this place was founded on, and if it reached you through the food alone, then something has gone right that I have been waiting a long time to hear. When I was opening this restaurant I said to friends of mine, people who had been running restaurants far longer than I had, that a restaurant is more than a frontage and a menu — that what matters is the soul of the food. One of them, someone I still count as my teacher in this trade, smiled at me the way you smile at somebody young. Today a customer found it and named it, without being told it was there. That is the best day this restaurant has had. Thank you, Ava. Come back whenever you like. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

SHANIB — thank you. You named the three things a delivery can lose on the way: the heat, the flavour, and the state of the box it arrives in. Getting all three to a door intact is the whole job, and most nights it is decided long before the driver arrives. Glad it held. Come back soon.

Hadi wrote back

Yamima — thank you. Of all the meals in a summer holiday, the last few days carry a particular weight: everybody knows it is ending, and nobody wants to waste one of them. That you spent one of those at our table is not a small thing. And feeding older teenagers is the hardest test this kitchen gets. They have no manners about food and no reason to be kind about it — if the portions had been mean or the fries ordinary, I would have known before you left the table. Happy boys is the review; the rest is detail. So: to Niaz and Yousef, the best of everything. And to Niaz especially — newly qualified in mechanical engineering, and right at the start of it. That is a good thing to be building, and a good time to be building it. May the road ahead be a long and interesting one, and may he end up somewhere that deserves him. "Tucked away in Seacombe" is fair, and you are not the first to say it. We are easy to miss from the road. The plan was always that the food would do the finding for us. Come back soon — all three of you. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Harry — thank you. Two things in that short note, and both of them matter here. The first is the timing. When we tell you a delivery will arrive at a certain time, that is a promise made before the food is even cooked, and it is the easiest one in this trade to break. Keeping it is not luck; it is the whole reason we run our own website and our own messages rather than leaving it to somebody else. So thank you for noticing the one thing nobody notices unless it goes wrong. The second is "a little bit different". That is the sentence a kitchen like this lives or dies on. Different is a risk when people are hungry and tired and want something familiar. That you took the risk, and then said you would order again because of it, is the best outcome we could ask for. Next time, ask for something you have not tried. Different has more where that came from. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

I knew you the moment you came through the door. Months had passed and you look quite different now, but some people announce themselves before they speak, and you are one of them. There is nothing better for a kitchen than this: somebody comes back to the Wirral for a single day, and decides that the day has a meal here in it. One day, and you spent part of it with us. I will not forget that. You wrote about the food in great detail, and I am grateful for it. You wrote kindly about me too, which I am not certain I have earned — but the thing this review leaves out is you. How kind you are, how patient, how much warmth you carry with you. The energy arrives through that door before you do, and I found myself thinking that the people who get to see you every day are luckier than they probably realise. So let me put that on the record instead. I hope the work goes well for you, and that the thing you are planning for yourself finds its feet. I have no doubt at all about how that will turn out. I hope the crossing back to Ireland was a kind one. Whenever the Wirral has you again, you know where we are — and the table, and all of us, will be watching the door. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Mindaugas — thank you, and welcome. You came off a boat, you had another one to catch, and somewhere in the middle of that day you sat down in a small shop in Wallasey you had never heard of. That takes a certain willingness, and I am glad it worked out. You were brought here by someone who had eaten with us before, which puts a quiet pressure on a kitchen — nobody wants to be the reason a friend's recommendation goes wrong. So it matters to me that the burger held up on your first visit as well as it did on his second. Putting the Homali Topping on the chips was your own idea, though. That one is entirely to your credit. Next time the ferry brings you across, you know where we are. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Younes — thank you. You came to the Wirral looking for Algerian food, and a machine pointed you at a Persian kitchen instead. I am glad it did, and I suspect it knew what it was doing. Thank you for what you wrote — about the lamb, and about me. Praise for the food is something a cook can work towards. The other kind is harder to earn, and it means more. But the food was not the best part of that evening. The talking was. Two people come in as strangers, looking for something else entirely, and stay to talk — that is the part of this work that never appears on a menu, and the part I would miss most if it ever went. Come back, both of you. Homali will be waiting, and so will the rest of the conversation. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

J K — thank you, and thank you for the eyes. You noticed the bag before the food, then the way it had been packed, then the smell before the first bite. Most people would have eaten and gone to bed. That attention is why I want to answer properly. We are fussy about every single item that leaves here — where the ingredients come from, how a portion is built, what it is packed in, the bag itself. Not because any one of those things is remarkable on its own, but because a customer today deserves more than simply being fed. They deserve care, and the respect of having the small things thought about. It is quiet work, and it is a sweet thing when somebody notices it and takes the trouble to say so. Now, the desserts. You are right, and we agree: this menu has room for more. Our focus at the moment is on making the dishes we already have as good as they can possibly be — but more will come in time, and sweet things are near the top of that list. Until then, try our cookies. My wife makes them, with a patience I do not have and a fussiness that puts mine to shame. And if I do not forget, there will be one in your next order, on us, so you can tell me what you think. Ordering the same thing again two days later is the best review on this page. Thank you. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Pete — thank you. There is nothing a cook would rather read than this, and I mean that plainly: praise for the food itself, from someone eating it for the first time, who owed us nothing. The smoke you tasted is the part I want to answer. It would have been far easier to cook that burger on a flat grill — quicker, cleaner, no fire to manage on a busy night. We chose the harder way and put it over real wood charcoal, because char does something a grill cannot: it makes the food taste better, and it makes it taste like something you have met before. Smoke carries memory. There is a summer, a garden, a fire somewhere behind it for almost everybody. So to have you notice it on a first order, and to put a name to it, is the proudest thing that has happened to this kitchen today. The extra work was for exactly that. Come back soon — and thank you for the recommendation. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Achim — vielen Dank. „Von außen unscheinbar" — das stimmt, und wir wissen es. Die Fassade ist das Einzige an diesem Laden, in das wir kein Geld gesteckt haben; alles, was wir haben, liegt auf dem Teller. Dass Sie genau das bemerkt haben, ist das schönste Kompliment, das man uns machen kann. Beim Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis ist nichts dem Zufall überlassen. Und dass Sie freundlich empfangen wurden, freut mich am meisten. Einen Gast ordentlich zu bewirten, bevor über alles andere geredet wird — das ist die Gastfreundschaft, aus der ich komme. Heute war, wie ich hörte, Ihr erster Tag auf dem Wirral. Ich hoffe sehr, dass er schön war und dass der Rest Ihrer Reise genauso wird. Und falls Sie noch in der Gegend sind: Ich würde mich freuen, Sie wiederzusehen. Der Grill ist an. — Homali