25a Warren Street, London W1 (020 7388 6175). Meal for two: £80

There are many things I want from a restaurant; love is not one of them. I do not expect restaurants or their staff to love me, either in that Hallmark greeting-card sense or that moist adult way. Usually this is fine. I have a number of defining qualities; lovability has never been close to the top of the list. When eating in the US, however, nobody seems to notice. There, almost every chef and waiter will announce that the food being served has been prepared "with love". What? You had congress with my enchiladas? You personally dressed my cobb salad? Say it ain't so. It brings to mind the thing the narrator does to a slab of raw liver, destined for the family's dinner, in Philip Roth's novel, Portnoy's Complaint. If you've read it you know. If you haven't – oh, just work it out.

You get the point: I am unwilling to attach the warmer human emotions to restaurants. They are businesses, driven by other (often virtuous) motives. But there are exceptions. Honey & Co, a small whitewashed place with a Moorish tiled floor and a Levantine menu to match, is that exception. It belongs to an Israeli husband and wife. It's probably worth knowing that Sarit Packer was previously the pastry chef for Ottolenghi and executive head chef for the sprauncier place, Nopi. Her husband, Itamar, has his own armful of experience and says he has been cooking since the age of five "and leaving a great mess in the kitchen ever since".

If Ottolenghi marries clean-lined, perfectly poised lifestyle with food, Honey & Co is just about dinner. When a chef tells you he prefers eating to cooking, as Itamar does, you know you are in good hands. The restaurant, at the darker end of Warren Street, is small and noisy, all elbows and knees. Damn and blast. It feels like an act of love.

There is a standard starter-main-course-dessert menu, but the best deal is the set – £29.50 brings you a table-crowding mezze followed by your choice of main and dessert. All of it shrieks of freshness and poise, from the banal – a bowl of kalamata olives with their own crunchy pickled cucumber – to the more involved. Who knew you could get something so luscious and compelling out of carrots and butternut squash formed into deep-fried fritters? Their hummus is a reminder that it does not have to be the sort of thing you'd grout a bathroom with. It is what it should always be: a powerful garlicky condiment that forces you to ask for more hot, soft pitta bread. Even a simple mixed beetroot salad shows unusual care and attention. It dyes the lips and gladdens the heart. To this we added a starter of roasted smokey-charred octopus with chilli and coriander.

I will confess a moment's disappointment. I ordered the lamb shawarma, expecting a plate of the roast meat – often the belly – with a surplus of caramelised fat of the sort to make a cardiologist start calculating the bill for their services to come. Though the sweet-spiced flavour was the same, this was a bowl of long-braised meat collapsing into its own juices. No matter. It was still a very good bowl of meat. To lift things there was the crunch of a cabbage salad and the calming balm of a little yogurt. Beef kofta were spiced balls of quality beef, alongside an exceptional aubergine purée. This was comfort food for people who like to end the day wearing silk slippers, delivered by a bunch of young women who care about your comfort.

The dessert menu distinguishes itself by name-checking Claudia Roden as the originator of an orange cake recipe, and any kitchen which does that is all right by me, Claudia being a bona fide goddess. I'll try it another time. Instead we finished with a soft, warm pistachio cake with the sour punch of roasted plums and an extraordinarily good cold cheese cake, of deep, rich, sweet-sour honeyed cream on a crisp, sugared pastry base. This is indeed food made by people who like to eat. It is food that cares less about how it looks than how it tastes. Call me sentimental. Call me soppy. But it feels like an act of love. Perhaps I'm getting old. ■

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1