Ottolenghi
Ottolenghi has several restaurants in London, but we enjoyed dinner in their Hampstead venue on a cheeky Monday to celebrate.
The menu doesn't have starters or mains, but only nibbles and sharing dishes, which was made abundantly clear by our waiter. However, there is a selection of cold and warm sharing dishes which by necessity are served in two waves: the cold ones, and the warm ones — nicely separating them in starters and main courses. Did I mention everything is meant to share?
We started our meal with a crisp glass of pét-nat, a naturally sparkling wine, while munching on za'atar pita chips with a yoghurt and red chilli dip.
As our starter (sorry, cold sharing dish), we chose the burrata with marinated mandarins. The freshness of the mandarins worked well with the burrata, and the rocket added some extra pepperiness.
We picked our mains as non-sharing, but ended up sharing a fair bit anyway. My wife picked the Adana lamb kebabs with babaganoush and picked onions. These were nicely spiced, with the babaganoush adding the necessary moisture. I selected the crispy chicken 'chop', which was served with a tahini and walnut sauce. The chicken 'chop' had a nice crispy skin, and the sauce was excellent. The portion size of the chicken dish was somewhat larger than the lamb kebabs.
With our mains we enjoyed a lovely bottle of red wine, a Garnacha from Navarra. At the end, we went back and forth about ordering pudding. We ended up settling on sharing a Bakewell tart. With crispy edges, a nicely sour filling, and some pistachio nuts sprinkled on top.
We enjoyed Ottolenghi, but we're not in agreement on the ambience. Although we both found it relaxed and welcoming, I also found it a little pretentious. Particularly the "cold and warm sharing dishes" shtick instead of the starters and mains they would have been in other restaurants. All of the dishes were really tasty, well presented, and the staff were great. We would return.
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