Yotam Ottolenghi
London-based chef, cookbook author and recipe writer whose vegetable-centred cooking brings Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavours to home kitchens.
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Latest
Yotam’s happenings, collected from public sources, plus their backstory and Starbook, where fans write.
Known for
Overview
- Home city
- Jerusalem
- Based in
- London
- Work
- Chef, restaurateur, cookbook author and recipe writer
- First shop
- Notting Hill, London, 2002
- Breakthrough
- Plenty (2010) brought vegetable cooking to a wider home audience
- Creative base
- Ottolenghi Test Kitchen, Holloway
Mini bio
How it started.
Before the kitchens came books and newspapers. Yotam earned a master’s degree in philosophy and comparative literature at Tel Aviv University and worked on the news desk at Haaretz. In 1997, he moved to England to study at Le Cordon Bleu, then began working as a pastry chef in London.
The first shop.
In 2002, Yotam, Sami Tamimi and their partners opened a small deli in Notting Hill. It brought together a bakery, food shop and restaurant, with food rooted in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean traditions and open to ingredients from elsewhere.
Into home kitchens.
Plenty, published in 2010, gathered vegetarian recipes from his Guardian column alongside new dishes. Penguin identifies it as a turning point in his influence on British home cooking. Jerusalem followed in 2012, written with Sami Tamimi and shaped by their memories of growing up on different sides of the same city.
At the test kitchen.
Today, Yotam develops recipes with the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen team in Holloway, writes for the Guardian and the New York Times, and oversees the group’s restaurants and delis. His books remain collaborative: Comfort brought together Helen Goh, Verena Lochmuller and Tara Wigley, while Simple Too was written with Lochmuller.
Creditschronological, newest first
- 2026Ottolenghi Simple TooCo-author with Verena Lochmuller
- 2024Ottolenghi ComfortCo-author with Helen Goh, Verena Lochmuller and Tara Wigley
- 2018Ottolenghi SimpleAuthor
- 2015NOPI: The CookbookCo-author with Ramael Scully
- 2012JerusalemCo-author with Sami Tamimi
- 2010PlentyAuthor
Awards
Quotes
Watch the pot, feel the texture change, taste as you go.Yotam Ottolenghi, How to cook beans, 31 October 2026
His advice on cooking dried beans in his newsletter: https://ottolenghi.substack.com/p/how-to-cook-beans
Trivia
- Despite writing Plenty and championing vegetables, Yotam is not a vegetarian, as its publisher explains.
- His official biography names family life and pilates as favourite distractions from cooking.
- He has a favourite large green enamelled cast-iron pot, and uses a small chipped mug to measure most things.
Find Yotam
Recipes, kitchen notes and new projects, straight from Yotam and the team.
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