Yotam Ottolenghi Wiki, Age, Husband, Married, Kids, Masterchef, Height, Instagram, Books, Net Worth, Nationality

Yotam Ottolenghi Wiki – Yotam Ottolenghi Biography

Yotam Ottolenghi is an Israeli-British chef, restaurateur, and food writer. He is the co-owner of six delis and restaurants in London, as well as the author of several bestselling cookbooks, including Ottolenghi (2008), Plenty – 2010, Jerusalem – 2012, and SIMPLE (2018). He was conscripted into the Israel Defence Forces in 1989, serving three years in IDF intelligence headquarters. He then studied at the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Programme for Outstanding Students of Tel Aviv University, wherein 1997, he completed a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in comparative literature; his thesis being on the philosophy of the photographic image. While working on his thesis, he served as a night copy editor for Haaretz. In 1997, he moved to Amsterdam, where he edited the Hebrew section of the Dutch-Jewish weekly NIW and considered getting his doctorate in comparative literature. Instead, he moved to London to study French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu.

He served as a pastry chef at three London restaurants: the Michelin-starred Capital Restaurant, Kensington Place, and Launceston Place in Kensington New Town. In 1999, he became head pastry chef at the artisanal pastry shop Baker and Spice, where he met the Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi, who grew up in Jerusalem’s Old City. In 2002, the duo founded the eponymous delicatessen Ottolenghi in the Notting Hill district of London. The deli quickly gained a cult following due to its inventive dishes, characterized by the foregrounding of vegetables, unorthodox flavour combinations, and the abundance of Middle Eastern ingredients such as rose water, za’atar, and pomegranate molasses. When asked to explain his cooking philosophy, Ottolenghi said, “I want drama in the mouth.” The Ottolenghi brand has since expanded to include two more delis, a formal restaurant in Islington, a brasserie named NOPI in Soho, and a vegetable-centric restaurant named Rovi which opened in Fitzrovia in June 2018.

In 2006, he started writing a weekly column for The Guardian titled “The New Vegetarian,” though he himself is not a vegetarian and has sometimes noted where a vegetable-centric recipe would pair well with a particular cut of meat. Influenced by the straightforward, culturally-grounded food writing of Nigella Lawson and Claudia Roden, his recipes rarely fit within traditional dietary or cultural categories. He explained that his mission is to “celebrat[e] vegetables or pulses without making them taste like meat, or as complements to meat, but to be what they are. It does no favour to vegetarians, making vegetables second best.”His debut cookbook Ottolenghi was published in 2008 and has sold over 100,000 copies. Seven volumes have followed: the all-vegetable cookbooks Plenty (2010) and Plenty More (2014); Jerusalem (2012); Nopi (2015); the dessert cookbook Sweet (2017); Ottolenghi Simple (2018); and Ottolenghi FLAVOUR (2020). Ottolenghi’s bestselling cookbooks have proven influential, with The New York Times noting that they are “widely knocked off for their plain-spoken instructions, puffy covers, and photographs oversees himself, eschewing a food stylist”. In 2014, the London Evening Standard remarked that he had “radically rewritten the way Londoners cook and eat”, and Bon Appétit wrote that he had “made the world love vegetables”.

He has hosted three television specials: Jerusalem on a Plate (BBC4, 2011); Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast (More4, 2012); and Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Island Feast (More4, 2013). In 2017, he served as a guest judge on the ninth and eleventh season of the cooking game show Masterchef Australia. He had declined numerous guest-judge offers in the past and agreed to appear on Masterchef Australia “because it’s quite humane and positive….It’s about the personal development of the contestants more than the competition.”

Yotam Ottolenghi Age

He was born Yotam Assaf Ottolenghi, on December 14, 1968, in Jerusalem and raised in Ramat Denya, Jerusalem.

Yotam Ottolenghi Husband

He is married to his husband, Karl Allen who is a law graduate and former British Airways flight attendant, and a collector of vintage 1950s antiques. They met in 2000 and got married in 2012.

Yotam Ottolenghi Children

He has two children and being gay his children (both sons) were born through a surrogate. His son, Max was born in 2013 through an American surrogate mother, and Flynn was born in 2015.

Yotam Ottolenghi Family

He was born to Jewish parents, the son of Michael Ottolenghi, a chemistry professor at Hebrew University, and Ruth Ottolenghi, a high school principal. He is of Italian Jewish and German Jewish descent, and often spent his childhood summers in Italy. He has an older sister, Tirza Florentin. His younger brother, Yiftach, was killed by friendly fire in 1992 during his military service.

Yotam Ottolenghi Nationality

He is of mixed nationality comprising of British, Israeli, and Italian nationality.

Yotam Ottolenghi Instagram

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Instagram account is @ottolenghi.