We have a huge collection of cookbooks at home, but two of the ones that we thumb through and use on a regular basis are from the London-based restaurants Ottolenghi. I first learned about the restaurant through chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s excellent weekly article in The Guardian, which started off as a vegetarian cooking column but has recently expanded to include a few meat-based recipes. Like his cookbooks Ottolenghi: The Cookbook and Plenty, his articles feature simply prepared foods with bold tastes inspired by the flavors of the Mediterranean by way of the chef’s upbringing in Israel. Pretty much everything that we have made from his articles and cookbooks have tasted great, so while we are in London, we definitely wanted to eat at one of his restaurants.
I’ve decided that eating at a restaurant whose chef or cookbook you like is similar to meeting your favourite author or seeing your favourite band play live for the first time. Will the author be as funny as the words they write? Will the band sound even better live than the record you listen to at home? The questions for eating at a beloved in theory restaurant range from will the food taste as good as their cookbook makes it look to whether the restaurant’s ambiance will live up to how you imagine enjoying their food. On both fronts, Ottolenghi proved even better than my expectations.
This was our view as we entered Ottolenghi in Islington last night. A huge display of the most vibrant and beautiful prepared cold dishes. You can either buy them by the pound to go during the day, or at night, you can order them from a menu full of daily specials. From the cold menu, we ordered seared beef filet with a mustard-parsley sauce; roasted butternut squash with figs, feta, and arugula; and roasted eggplant with a spicy tomato sauce and pine nuts. Despite already being prepared and on display, each dish tasted like it had been freshly made and was rich with complex and varying flavors. In addition to the cold menu, you can also order hot items from the kitchen. We decided on tea smoked duck and the most perfect looking little lamb chops. Each plate is made for sharing and the casual but elegant ambiance encourages a fun and lively dinner, just how I like to dine.
In case the platters of cold dishes wasn’t enough to get your stomach racing, this was Ottolenghi’s dessert display!
I had to go back and look at this outrageous landscape of baked goods a few times in order to limit ourselves to only two desserts. We settled on a simple, yet perfect rhubarb cake with a side of warm vanilla cream and a ginormous raspberry merengue that we cracked open and filled with whipped cream. It was a decadent end to a fabulous dinner that makes me excited to crack open those cookbooks as soon as we get back to Austin, so I can relive our experience and share it with friends. Now that is the true goal to which every cookbook should aspire to achieve!
