Imad Alarnab: From penniless Syrian refugee in Doncaster to TV chef with own London restaurant

When Syrian chef Imad Alarnab arrived in the UK in 2015 after months of being covertly shipped across Europe in lorries, he had a few pounds in his pocket – “just enough for the bus fare to Doncaster where my sister lived,” he said.

Since then, his life has undergone a remarkable transformation.

He now has a restaurant of his own in London’s Carnaby Street and is a regular on BBC One weekend cookery show Saturday Kitchen.

He lost everything to the war in Syria and came to the UK as a refugee.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, he revealed he could barely afford to eat. Meals were regularly skipped and a Snickers bar could be eked out over a whole day to help him survive.

On opening Imad’s Syrian Kitchen, the 45-year-old father of three said: “This is not because I am strong or brave. I am proof that if you try to do something good for people, something good will happen to you. This is a fact.”

He spent three dangerous months crossing from Damascus to Europe, smuggled in lorries via Lebanon, Turkey and North Macedonia.

When he came to Doncaster, he worked as a car washer and car salesman until he found a way to cook again.

Back in Syria, he had lived a comfortably affluent life as the owner of three restaurants and several juice bars and coffee shops.

“Everything I owned was bombed within six days in 2012,” he said. “We lost everything, but I still considered myself the luckiest person – we moved continuously from place to place but I had my family, I had my wife and three daughters.”

The restaurant was born of a dream that first took hold when he partnered with a charity to host a pop-up kitchen in east London in March 2017. It was an immediate word-of-mouth success and led to many more, with Alarnab bringing traditional Syrian cuisine to customers from Hampstead to High Wycombe, leading to regular Saturday morning TV spots.