Recently I dined at the Ottolenghi Spitalfields restaurant with two of my longest-known food blogger friends. We talked about the huge influence Ottolenghi’s style of cooking had been since the early 2010s, and how his signature salads and baking set the tone for many food writers and cafes since.
In this post I am compiling some of my early experiences cooking Ottolenghi recipes and recalling my first experience eating at Ottolenghi in Notting Hill. Then I will share a few dishes where I feel Ottolenghi’s influence has rubbed off on my cooking style (see if you agree!) and conclude with more detailed pictures of our more recent Ottolenghi Spitalfields lunch.
I shared numerous Ottolenghi dishes in the first year of this site, as did many others at the time; Ottolenghi The Cookbook was a big favourite. I can barely look at a head of broccoli without my mouthwatering and imagining it doused in lemon and chilli; Ottolenghi took humble vegetables and made them a star attraction.
Cooking from Ottolenghi The Cookbook
What makes Ottolenghi so popular? I think it was the broad appeal of gutsy flavours, transforming everyday fresh ingredients into something more exciting. Although Ottolenghi’s food isn’t always vegetarian, vegetables are often the hero ingredient.
I noticed a formula; take a bright vegetable, some herbs, mix in nuts, seeds, spices. If the ingredient lists are rarely short, the cooking methods are rarely complicated. If you take the time to assemble everything and have the patiences for some serious chopping, Ottolenghi recipes are easy to recreate at home.
Ottolenghi salads tend to be colourful with a complex mixture of flavours and textures, this Sweet Potato Salad With Maple and Pecans is a great example. You’ve got the softness from the sweet potatoes contrasted with the nutty crunch of toasted pecans; the bright orange of the sweet potato flesh on the opposite side of the colour wheel from the fresh coriander and spring onions.
I have served this sweet potato salad dish still hot, with the sweet potatoes only just from the oven, I have taken it cold in boxes to pot-lucks and served it at party buffets. It’s very versatile. The maple and pecan, against the sweet potato give it an American Thanksgiving feel not normally associated with Middle Eastern food.
Another orange vegetable, butternut squash is the star of Couscous with Butternut Squash and Pumpkin Seeds. Again this is a dish that works warm or cold, as a side dish with family dinner or on a big platter on a party table.
The pumpkin seeds bring crunch to the soft couscous grains. Apricot brings sweetness against the savoury. This dish is perfect to make ahead and decant into lunchboxes and packed lunches during the week. And yet it’s glamorous enough to serve at a dinner party. Win win!
Not every Ottolenghi recipe I cooked was photogenic enough to make it onto social media. I remember using the Magimix to make hundreds of sweet potato slices for this Sweet Potato Gratin with slivers of garlic poked between the layers and a sprinkle of herbs on top.
It was delicious but sadly didn’t look great in the photo after baking! (I wasn’t as good at taking picture then!)
With the same dinner, I baked Chicken with Hazelnuts. Another dish that combined garlicky soft juiciness with a satisfyingly crunchy topping.
I served the sweet potato gratin and hazelnut chicken together for a casual dinner with friends, alongside some roast onions and watercress dressed with vinaigrette.
This dish brings back mixed memories: Brown Lentils With Blue Cheese and Balsamic Vinegar. I’d had a tooth taken out and couldn’t cope with anything crunchy or chewy. This recipe managed to satisfy my tastebuds even though my mouth was feeling delicate!
This stew of tomatoes, spices and pulses Chickpeas, Sweet Potato and Lemon Garlic Yoghurt – I think I adapted the lemon garlic yogurt with a lime version as well.
I also served the lime garlic yogurt alongside these Cauliflower Fritters – these were fantastic, a bit like onion bhajis. More fiddly than the salads but well worth the effort.
I haven’t kept up with all of the Ottolenghi cookbooks published since, but I have Plenty (unavailable pun there!). I have numerous others by food writers whose style may have been influenced by Ottolenghi; Honey & Co, Sabrina Ghayour, Meera Sodha.
My first dining experience at Ottolenghi in Notting Hill
As I started to meet other food bloggers in real life, after the first Food Blogger Connect, it was a natural lunch destination to visit Ottolenghi in Notting Hill to see what the food from the cookery book was like from the real kitchen.
I remember in the early 2010s, you couldn’t book a table at Ottolenghi and there was some nervousness whether we’d have to queue. As there were only two of us, they squeezed us in to the tiny space – no bigger than my dining room – where we perched on stools to eat. It was claustrophobic but the food and atmosphere took our minds off it.
The bountiful salads were all in the window for passers by to admire. As were the beautiful tarts and cakes. I picked this pointy passionfruit meringue in a pastry case, it seemed so exotic in a time that my local baker was Percy Ingle and the Great British Bake Off didn’t exist yet.
My friend ordered this gooey chocolate cake smothered in light chocolate shavings. You’ll have to forgive the photo, I probably took it with my first Android smart phone, which at least allowed me to post pictures on Twitter. Plus the friend in question was an enviably better photographer than me anyway.
At the time, there was great interest on Twitter from my few hundred Twitter followers. People were very interested I’d entered the hallowed territory of Ottolenghi in real life – some of my followers were from America and it was a huge novelty to bond about cake with people from other continents you’d never met – something we take for granted now.
I still make a point of looking in the window of Ottolenghi on Upper Street, Islington, whenever I pass. It’s always heaving with diners and sadly I never go in. In the 2010s, I managed to walk into a tiny café in Westbourne Grove on a Saturday lunchtime whereas today, even in a bigger branch this would be impossible.
My Own Cooking Being Influenced by Ottolenghi
I was looking through my photo archive at food I’ve photographed but not blogged recipes for. Several of them stood out to me as having an Ottolenghi feel about them, I don’t know whether you will agree:
This White Bean and Parsley Salad was a casually thrown together lunch; it had soft white rice, still warm, white beans, generous chopping of fresh parsley, and crunch from diced red pepper, sliced cornichons, radish and black sesame seeds.
This Orange and Mozzarella Salad With Pomegranate was one I served in summer. I remember taking the time to remove the peel from the orange slices and thinking how visually pleasing the slabs of mozzarella were against the pink onion rings and green baby spinach.
This was a warm Golden Beetroot, Kale and Feta Salad that featured in my Portobello Mushroom Tarts post, amidst an artfully styled picnic blanket spread! I never got around to publishing the recipe but I have it written down (and you can see all the ingredients here really).
What I think makes this beetroot salad evocative of a salad by Ottolenghi is that I’m using a fairly unusual vegetable, golden beetroot, and we are less used to eating fresh beetroot than pickled ones. So it’s not an obscure vegetable, but it’s a less common variety. The dressed kale brings greenery, the toasted walnuts brought crunch, the soft cubes of feta cheese added spark.
Dining at Ottolenghi Spitalfields in 2020s
My friend Michelle, Greedy Gourmet, was keen to entice myself and Jeanne, Cooksister to Ottolenghi for a Saturday lunch, late last year. It was a bucket-list experience she wanted to tick off. The three of us became friends after meeting at the first Food Blogger Connect. At a later FBC conference, Yotam Ottolenghi had been the headline guest speaker for Food Blogger Connect in Battersea. I recall there was a hush in the hall as he spoke; softly, and at length, about his cooking.
We chose the Spitalfields branch for our lunch meet-up as it’s handy from Liverpool Street. Even with advance booking, we only managed a table at midday, and on the proviso that we might be asked to move by 1.30pm. I don’t remember that being an issue at the casual cafe set up in Notting Hill, but nowadays, we are accustomed to popular restaurants turning over several bookings in one service.
Now you’ll have to forgive me I didn’t write down exactly what was in these dishes but I can tell you it was around £25 for a selection of three salads.
Although that sounded expensive for “salad”, the dish you get is so packed with flavour and textures that you don’t feel short changed.
The restaurant was fairly quiet when we arrived, and in fact we didn’t get moved on by 1.30, we stayed until well after 2pm. But what struck me was that post-pandemic, it was the kind of atmosphere I’d expect in a city establishment during the week before Covid happened. Bustling and vibrant.
Although the service wasn’t snooty, we could tell the clientele all had money, groomed hairstyles and expensive accessories. It was very different to perching on a stool, with whitewashed walls close enough to touch.
Whilst Michelle behaved herself with the salads, Jeanne and I went off the rails with cocktails and cake. Would you expect anything less here?
This was an orange polenta cake with thick lemon icing. I loved the tall cylindrical shape and the kumquats on top.
My dessert was carrot cake with thick buttercream and generous walnuts. I was glad we bothered with dessert because that’s what makes the full Ottolenghi experience; plenty of vegetables followed by a sweet indulgent bake!
A two course lunch of mixed salad dishes, a cocktail, dessert and coffee came to around fifty pounds each. Jeanne and I also ordered meat dishes you can partly see poking into the top picture.
Dining at Ottolenghi is not something I’d do regularly, but I did come away feeling I’d had a good experience that felt special. It’s been a while since I cooked from the more recent Ottolenghi books but I feel inspired to pick out some new favourites!
Have you eaten at any of Yotam Ottolenghi’s restaurants? Do you have a favourite Ottolenghi dish?
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