Yotam Ottolenghi Biography
Yotam Ottolenghi is a British chef, restaurateur, and food writer of Israeli origin. He co-owns seven London delis and restaurants and is the author of numerous best-selling cookbooks, including Ottolenghi: The Cookbook, Plenty, Jerusalem, and Simple.
How old is Yotam Ottolenghi? – Age
He is 54 years old as of 14 December 2022. He was born in 1968 in Jerusalem. His real name is Yotam Assaf Ottolenghi.
Yotam Ottolenghi Family – Education
Yotam Ottolenghi was born in Jerusalem to Jewish parents and reared in Ramat Denya. His father, Michael Ottolenghi, is a chemistry professor at Hebrew University, while his mother, Ruth Ottolenghi, is a high school principal. He is of Italian and German Jewish origin and spent several summers as a boy in Italy. Tirza Florentin is his older sister. During his military duty, his younger brother, Yiftach, was killed by friendly fire in 1992. Ottolenghi is an Italian surname, a shortened form of Ettlingen, a town in Baden-Württemberg from which Jews were driven in the 15th and 16th centuries, with many settling in Northern Italy.
Who is Yotam Ottolenghi’s husband? – Partner
Ottolenghi met Karl Allen in 2000; they married in 2012 and now live in Camden, London, with their two sons, born in 2013 and 2015. Ottolenghi “came out as a gay father” in a Guardian column in 2013 that chronicled the protracted process of producing their first son through gestational surrogacy, an option he feels should be more widely available to those who are unable to conceive naturally.
Yotam Ottolenghi Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $85 Million.
Yotam Ottolenghi House
He resides in Camden, London. The furniture in the Georgian house is a combination of modern and ancient. The tree-trunk dining table, which came from Israel and had to be brought into the house with a tiny crane after a window was removed, is surrounded by multi-colored Eames chairs. The vase is filled with garden peonies and hydrangeas.
More cookbooks and dinnerware are shown on the kitchen shelf. Ottolenghi’s original training as a pastry chef is reflected in his dessert books. A 1950s sofa upholstered in Designer’s Guild jade velvet and a 1960s Italian chandelier grace the living room; the old chairs, Beni Ourain rug, and vintage shoe lasts were purchased on eBay.
With painted floorboards, contemporary art on the walls, and a mix of modern and vintage furnishings, the Georgian terraced house near London’s Regent’s Park is fresh, light, and colorful. Ottolenghi’s husband Karl Allen, who collects vintage 1950s antiques, designed their north London house.
Who owns Ottolenghi Restaurant?
Ottolenghi worked as a pastry chef at three restaurants in London, including the Michelin-starred Capital Restaurant, Kensington Place, and Launceston Place in Kensington New Town. He took over as chief pastry chef at the artisanal pastry store Baker and Spice in 1999, where he met Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi, who grew up in Jerusalem’s Old City. Ottolenghi and Tamimi became friends because they spoke the same language, Hebrew, and shared a “incomprehension of traditional English food.”
In 2002, the trio (together with Noam Bar) opened the namesake Ottolenghi delicatessen in London’s Notting Hill area. The restaurant immediately garnered a cult following for its innovative meals, which included vegetables in the foreground, unconventional flavor combinations, and an abundance of Middle Eastern spices such as rose water, za’atar, and pomegranate molasses. Since then, the Ottolenghi brand has grown to include three more delis (in Islington, Marylebone, and Chelsea), a formal restaurant in Spitalfields, a brasserie called NOPI in Soho, and ROVI, a vegetable-centric restaurant that opened in Fitzrovia in June 2018.
Yotam Ottolenghi Masterchef Australia
He appeared as a guest judge on the cooking game show Masterchef Australia’s ninth (2017), eleventh (2019), and thirteenth (2021) seasons. He had previously denied multiple guest-judge requests, but chose to appear on Masterchef Australia “because it’s quite humane and positive….It’s more about the personal development of the contestants than the competition.”
Yotam Ottolenghi Books
Ottolenghi: The Cookbook, his first cookbook, was released in 2008. Plenty (2010), Plenty More (2014), and Ottolenghi Flavour (2020), all-vegetable cookery books; Jerusalem (2012); NOPI (2015); the dessert cookery book Sweet (2017); Ottolenghi Simple (2018); and, most recently, a series of Ottolenghi Test Kitchen (OTK) books: OTK: Shelf Love (2021) and OTK: Extra Good Things (2022). The New York Times noted that Ottolenghi’s bestselling cookery books are “widely knocked-off for their plain-spoken instructions, puffy covers, and photographs [that Ottolenghi] oversees himself, eschewing a food stylist.” Ottolenghi “radically rewritten the way Londoners cook and eat,” according to the London Evening Standard, and he “made the world love vegetables,” according to Bon Appétit.