Smarties & M&M's Ice Cream

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

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

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

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

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

Hadi wrote back

danny — thank you. Not only for the stars, but for the minutes. You had no reason to sit down and write all of that out. A first order, a good meal, and most people leave it there. You went further: what you ate, how it travelled, what state it was in when the bag came open. That is time taken out of your evening and handed to a kitchen you had only just met. I don't take that lightly. The line I keep coming back to is the cheese still being stringy. That is the whole business in a single phrase. Between our pass and your door there is a sealed hot bag and a short drive, and nearly every decision we make about how food leaves this kitchen is aimed at that one moment when you open it. To hear that it held — from someone paying that much attention — is the best news a kitchen gets. Thank you again, danny. Whenever you come back, the grill will be on. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Annie — thank you. That is a great many words to spend on a takeaway, and I have read them more than once. Since you have written so generously in public, let me say something in public too. The first time you ordered from us, it was collection — and I pressed the ready button by mistake. You came straight down, and the food was not there. Nothing to hand you, and nothing to say for myself. So I cooked it, got in the car, and brought it to your door. You have probably forgotten that evening. I have not. It still sits with me, and I suspect it always will. But there is another half to that story. That mistake is how this friendship started. If pressing the wrong button is what it took to find a guest like you, then I have made far worse trades. You wrote about care, and passion, and affection — and of everything in your review, that is the part I want to answer properly. Care is not a feeling in this kitchen. It is a set of small, unglamorous decisions, made when nobody is watching and everybody is tired. It is leaving something on the charcoal for the extra minute it is asking for, on a night when that minute costs you. It is building a plate at eleven with the same hand you used at five. It is the first thing that wants to slip, on exactly the evening you most need it not to. So what you noticed is not really the food. It is the hundred small times a day we chose not to take the shortcut. To be seen doing that — named, in public, by someone who kept coming back — makes the next hundred easier. However much I thank you for that, it will not be enough. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Hannah — thank you. You wrote about the parts of an order that nobody ever writes about, and I noticed. We send messages as an order moves — that is our own system, built in this kitchen, and most people never open a single one. You read every one I sent. Waiting is not really what bothers anybody; not knowing is. And then, before you had written a word on this page, you sent a message of your own, to say thank you and to say it generously. That one arrived first. Whatever this review does for us, that message had already done more. Let me say plainly why it mattered. A customer is not a ticket to us. When an order comes through our own website rather than through an app, we are given something the apps never give us: the chance to speak to the person we are cooking for — a name, a message, an answer back. It is a narrow opening, and we do not let it pass. Most of what I know about the people who eat this food, I learned in a few lines like those. The generous portion and the leftovers were not an accident either; we build them that way. You said you would be back to work through more of the menu. Do. There is a good deal on it that nobody orders on a first visit, and some of that is where this kitchen actually lives. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

David — thank you. The note you left here is short. What you did afterwards was not. A few days after writing it, you came in yourself. The same order, exactly — nothing swapped, nothing changed. You had already had it once, carried out to your door, and you still made the journey for it. I have thought about that more than you would guess. I know a little of the work you do. Long hours, long miles, and your own table always somewhere else. The food that fits around it is usually whatever is quickest at the services. That is the part that bothers me. A kitchen cannot give you your own kitchen back, but it can refuse to hand you something merely assembled. What leaves here is cooked slowly, by hand, for a person rather than for a queue — not fast food, but food with something of a home in it, made for someone a long way from their own. At the end of a day like yours, you have more than earned that. So: the beef sandwich and the parmesan chips. Next time, don't bother telling me. I'll have it ready. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Clint — thank you. The beef sandwich and the loaded fries are two we take seriously, so it is good to know they reached you in the state they left in. And yes, the bag is meant to be kept. It costs us a great deal more than a carrier bag, and it is the only way we have found of getting food to a door still properly hot. If it has a second life at your house, better still.

Hadi wrote back

Rafiul — thank you, and thank you for the trouble you took writing it. You mentioned the packaging before the food, which almost nobody does, and then you named the thing we spend the most money on: the ingredients. Food cooked this plainly gives you nowhere to hide a cheap one. It turns up on the plate, every time. We would rather pay for the good one and be judged on it. Come back soon.

Hadi wrote back

Jalal — thank you. You will not know this, but you walked in on an important day for us. We had just changed the menu. The burgers had come off the flat-top and gone over real wood charcoal — a decision I had turned over for weeks, and one that changes everything about how a burger behaves: the smoke, the fat, the timing, how little room there is to get it wrong. Yours was the first charcoal burger this kitchen ever sent out to a guest. And it went out at lunchtime, which made it worse. There is no crowd at midday to lose a plate in. One guest, one burger, and me watching it the way a cook does when pretending not to watch. I will admit plainly that I was nervous. There is no test for a change like that except the first person who eats it, and that afternoon the first person was you. You wrote that everything was perfect. Four words, and you will never know what they settled. The charcoal stayed. Every burger that has left this kitchen since has been cooked that way, and your verdict is part of the reason it did. Come back soon. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Raja — thank you. Ten orders in, and you are still writing about the food as though it were the first. That is the harder test, and the only one we actually care about passing. The Homali Beef is one we take particular trouble over, so knowing it has become a fixture in your house means a great deal. Here is to the next ten.

Hadi wrote back

Julie — thank you, and you have the story right. Only one detail is missing, and since you told the rest of it in public, I may as well finish it. The order was cancelled at their end, not ours. That was not your fault, and it was not ours either, and you had already spent your evening waiting on food that was never coming — so I had no intention of charging you anything at all. I meant to bring it over and let that be the end of the matter. You would not have it. Every time you asked what it came to, I found something else to talk about, and every time I dodged it you asked again. Eventually you won. I took a small amount in the end — far less than the food was worth, and more than I had any wish to accept. Here is why I did not want it. There are hundreds of places in Wirral you could have ordered from that night, and the one you chose had just left you sitting with nothing. You would have been entitled to write us off on the spot. You stayed with us anyway. That is worth a world more than the price of a meal, and I had already been paid in it — to take your money on top would have been to be paid twice for the same thing. You had every right to be angry that evening. Instead you rang to ask calmly what had gone wrong, and then argued with me about paying for food I was trying to give you. Thank you for the luck you wished us. Things have gone well since, and some of that is owed to evenings that ended the way that one did. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Josh — thank you. You told me, that first time, that you were a picky eater. I don't think you realised what that does to a cook. Most people say nothing at all and you only find out afterwards. You said it up front, and I spent the rest of that order quietly worried about you. Then you ordered again the following week. And again after that, and again — which was the answer. Something else has happened since you wrote this, and you know it better than I can set it down here. You arrived as a customer, and you have become a friend — the kind I try new ideas on, who tastes a dish before it is finished and tells me plainly what is wrong with it. That is a rarer thing than a good review. Anybody will tell you they enjoyed it; very few will tell you what to fix. If this restaurant had given me nothing else, it would still have given me that: the chance to meet people who take a genuine interest in you and in what you are building. It is the part I did not expect, and the part I would not trade. — Homali

Hadi wrote back

Sarah — thank you. The lamb is a shank, cooked slowly for hours until it gives up and lifts off the bone; there is no quick version of it, which is exactly why we serve it. And the rice takes its flavour from the same pot. You noticed both, and you noticed the bag was insulated, which tells me the food arrived as it was meant to. That is the whole job. Come back soon.