Ottolenghi

Yotam's homecoming: the full vegetable playbook, grill smoke and all, in the Conservatorium's glass atrium.

Thirty years after a student stint in Amsterdam, Yotam Ottolenghi is back with his first Dutch restaurant: an 85-seat all-day room, plus 30 terrace seats in the courtyard, inside the Conservatorium's glass atrium, ceramic fish and murals included. The kitchen runs the full playbook and runs it well: celeriac smoked and chargrilled into a shawarma, stuffed into pita with bkeila and fermented tomato; burnt leek under yuzu cream and smoked almonds; kimchi and Gouda fritters as the obligatory Dutch handshake. Of twenty-odd dishes only a handful involve meat, and the press has been kind on both sides of the Channel; Barts Boekje files it under great long lunches, Foodies came away smitten, Elite Traveler shrugged that it is exactly the Ottolenghi you already know, which is rather the point. The caveat is early service: long gaps between courses, a room that adjoins a five-star lobby and occasionally runs on hotel time, and at these prices (mains 19 to 41, a Dover sole at 84) that stings. The food is not the problem. Come at lunch, when the atrium does its best light and the booking gods are kinder, and the maths works.

Book lunch, not dinner: same menu, easier table, and the atrium is built for daylight. The celeriac shawarma is the order; the fondant warns of a 15-minute wait and earns it.

Photo: Ottolenghi

Photo: Ottolenghi