Yotam Ottolenghi
| Yotam Ottolenghi | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
14 December 1968 Israel |
| Residence | London, U.K. |
| Occupation | Chef, writer |
| Known for | Cookery |
| Website | www |
Yotam Assaf Ottolenghi (born 14 December 1968) is an Israeli-born British chef, recipe writer and restaurant owner. He is the co-owner of several delis in London, including Ottolenghi Notting Hill, and the author of four cookbooks.
Yotam Ottolenghi was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Jerusalem's Ramat Denya neighbourhood. He has an older sister, Tirza Florentin and a late younger brother, Yiftach. His father was a chemistry teacher at the Hebrew University and his mother a teacher. As was a child, he often spent his summers in Italy. His grandparents were Italian, and he and his family stayed with them in their house, in the hills outside Florence. He served in the IDF Army-intelligence headquarters. He studied at Tel Aviv University before completing a master's degree in comparative literature. At this time he also worked on the news desk of Haaretz, one of Israel's largest daily papers. He moved to Amsterdam with his then-partner Noam Bar. By 1997 he had completed his master's degree in philosophy and comparative literature; his thesis was on the ontological status of the photographic image in aesthetic and analytic philosophy. During his time there, Ottolenghi edited the Hebrew pages of a Dutch-Jewish weekly, NIW. Later in 1997, he moved again, this time to the UK, planning to start a PhD but before he enrolled he signed up to train at Le Cordon Bleu cookery school in London for six months. He got a job as head pastry chef at the London boutique bakery Baker & Spice and this is where he met Sami Tamimi and Dan Lepard.
Following a six-month course at the London-based French cookery school, Le Cordon Bleu, in 1997, Ottolenghi worked as a pastry chef at The Capital Restaurant, the Michelin-starred restaurant in Knightsbridge. From there he moved to work in the pastry section of the Kensington Place restaurant and that of the sister restaurant, Launceston Place, for a year, under the chef Rowley Leigh. He eventually became head pastry chef at Baker and Spice in Chelsea, London, where he met Sami Tamimi – co-founder of their delicatessens and restaurants and co-author of the Ottolenghi and Jerusalem cookery books – in 1999.
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