An Evening with Yotam Ottolenghi
Celebrated chef and Guardian columnist shares childhood stories, culinary philosophy, and recipes with a live cooking demonstration.
Why we picked this
Ottolenghi didn't just write cookbooks. He changed what home cooks in the English-speaking world think of as ordinary ingredients. This is a rare chance to hear the thinking behind that shift, live.
Yotam Ottolenghi has spent more than two decades reshaping how the English-speaking world thinks about vegetables, spices, and the once-exotic staples of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean kitchens. His Guardian column ran for sixteen years, and his cookbooks (Plenty, Jerusalem, Ottolenghi Simple) have sold millions of copies globally. The so-called “Ottolenghi Effect” is real: ingredients like za’atar, preserved lemon, and pomegranate molasses are now supermarket staples in cities that barely stocked them a generation ago.
At this City Arts & Lectures evening, Ottolenghi draws on childhood stories growing up in Jerusalem, the culinary education that took him from Tel Aviv to London, and the philosophy behind the delis and restaurants he runs in the British capital. Expect a live cooking demonstration alongside a conversation that moves between memoir, craft, and the political dimensions of food.
Sydney Goldstein Theater is an intimate venue well-suited to this kind of talk, close enough to the stage that the demonstration lands and acoustically sharp enough that the conversation carries.