London Eats: Ottolenghi
I'd heard about Ottolenghi because of the cookbooks that Yotam Ottolenghi has released in the US. I'd actually tried a recipe from one of them, and unfortunately it turned out horribly - a black pepper beef with way too much black pepper. But I still was curious to try this restaurant, because I'd read how delicious their vegetables were.
For takeaway, you have two choices - a small box or a large box. Since the large box looked pretty shallow, and was about €16, around the cost of eating off the lunch menu, I thought that it was the appropriate size.
It turns out that they really stuff the food in! The staff took the servers and really pushed the food in so what resulted was a dense brick of food.
There was so much food, I think one box could really feed a family of four. The picture below shows what was leftover the next day. This was a very large dinner plate! Clockwise from left: Aubergine with feta yogurt, caramelized onion, lemon zest, and crispy kale; broccoli; baked purple onion and chickpeas with goat cheese and pine nuts and za'atar; roasted root vegetables with chestnuts. In the middle was my favorite, mashed yellow split peas with Tunisian sweet corn salsa, caramelized onion, and red pepper crumbs.
I also got a "moist chocolate cake" with Bailey's cream inside. It was as good as it sounds!
