Imad's Syrian Kitchen opens a second site in Shoreditch

Imad Alarnab is opening a second Imad's Syrian Kitchen, on Blossom Street in Shoreditch, moving beyond his Soho restaurant for the first time since it opened in 2021.

The new site sits inside Norton Folgate, British Land's mixed-use development around the old Shoreditch High Street goods yard. Alarnab arrived in London as a refugee from Damascus and ran pop-ups in East London before opening the original Imad's Syrian Kitchen in Soho's Kingly Court in 2021, then moving it a few doors down to a larger unit in 2023. In autumn 2025 he added Aram, a daytime cafe at Somerset House.

British Land leasing director Alice Keown tied the signing to the landlord's own pitch for the site. “Stories like Imad's are exactly what make places special,” she said, adding that great hospitality is about people, resilience and community, not just food.

Eight years after his first pop-up, Imad Alarnab gets a second postcode rather than a second act.

What Shoreditch gets from Imad Alarnab

Norton Folgate's existing food and drink tenants include Xi Home, Kolamba East, Osteria Angelina, Urban Greens and Blank Street Coffee. Its anchor tenant is Kong, a Chinese pub from two-Michelin-starred chef Andrew Wong and Dishoom co-founder Amar Radia. British Land says only one restaurant unit at the development remains unlet.

Imad's Syrian Kitchen serves mezze, grilled meats and the mezze staples of Aleppo and Damascus, cooked by a chef who built his following through pop-ups before he had a permanent address. The Shoreditch site gives that menu a second home, rather than replacing the Soho original.

A date still to be confirmed

Neither Alarnab nor British Land has published a firm opening date; press coverage in September pointed to later in 2026, and a November roundup of London openings listed the site among the month's arrivals. For the dish most associated with his home city, our muhammara recipe, Aleppo's red pepper and walnut dip, traces the same ingredients Alarnab has built his menus around since his first pop-up.

The expansion makes Shoreditch the third London postcode for the Imad's Syrian Kitchen name, after Soho and Somerset House. It also arrives in a part of east London already filling up with new openings: Roast opened a second restaurant at a Shoreditch hotel earlier this month.