KESTIN x Ottolenghi

A conversation with Yotam Ottolenghi on his new Edinburgh restaurant, the quality of Scottish ingredients, and the art of brand building.

When Ottolenghi said they were opening in Edinburgh, we knew we wanted to be involved. Yotam Ottolenghi and his team have spent decades building a global brand on flavour and design.

To celebrate their first Scottish restaurant, we sat down with Yotam to talk about his approach, Edinburgh and what makes a good kitchen.

All images by Amy Heycock.

You talk a lot about the quality of an ingredient making or breaking a dish. Is there a moment early in your career where you really understood the raw material was everything?

So many moments. When I moved to the UK it was the first time that I came across so many out-of-season ingredients. Strawberries, asparagus, tomatoes – all tasting bland... no joy. I was under the impression that it just the way things are. Then I’ve come across the “real stuff”. Asparagus as it arrived in May was a revelation. I had it at Quo Vadis in Soho many years ago and it tasted like heaven. Luckily, there is an incredible array of in-season ingredients around. You just need to look for them.

Sourcing is something we obsess over at KESTIN, where something comes from, who made it, the relationship with our suppliers. How do you think about the supplier relationships behind Ottolenghi, and has that changed as you've scaled?

Suppliers matter enormously to us - more, if anything, as we've grown. Our kitchen garden at Wolves Lane, which supplies our London restaurant ROVI with fruit and veg, is a good example. Max, our grower there, brings us the most beautiful tomatoes, and courgettes and marrows in varieties I'd never even heard of before. We also love working with Wildfarmed, who supply flour to almost all our locations. Not only is their stone-milled flour so full of flavour – so nutty and alive – but they’re also trying to fix a broken food system.

Edinburgh is your first restaurant in Scotland. Scotland has an extraordinary larder, the seafood, the game, the dairy. What has the place itself had to teach you before you could put a menu here, and are there specific ingredients or producers you've found that you didn't expect?

We were lucky to have Neil Campbell leading this one - he's been such a part of the Ottolenghi journey over the last decade, and being born and raised in Scotland, he did most of the real teaching. He's the one who understood the ingredients, and who did the legwork finding the suppliers we needed to know. Crowdie's actually been on our menus in London for years, long before Edinburgh was ever on the cards, because Neil never let us forget how good it was.

Who taught you how to look at a plate, or did you have to work it out for yourself?

I am not sure, to be honest. It seems like a natural thing to me now, but I am sure it wasn’t always the case. My guess is that I was shown lots of examples of great plates over the years – balanced, compelling, just hitting the spot – and then I kind of worked it out. You grow as a cook as you do as a human. I find myself more attuned to a dish now...and more aware to its faults.

Your plates feel generous but never cluttered. How do you know when one is finished, and how do you resist adding one more thing?

Knowing when something's finished is genuinely one of the hardest parts of the job. My rule is always restraint: if you think a dish needs one more thing, it almost never does.

When you bring someone into the Ottolenghi kitchen, like Neil, who's leading Edinburgh, what do you tell them they can change, and what do you tell them not to touch?

I think the best thing you can do is give people real freedom. Neil understands what our food is about, so honestly, I don't need to tell him much beyond that.

What was harder than you expected about building a brand around your own name?

It really helps to build a business around one face. It helps with telling the story and with creating an emotional connection. People like a recognisable face at the top. Where it gets trickier is making sure people also understand that our business is run by a group of creative people who equally contribute to everything that is happening. It’s no false modesty to say that it really is a collective effort that brought us to where we are, including the creative vision.

KESTIN x Ottolenghi Neist Apron

Designed in collaboration with Ottolenghi to celebrate their first Scottish restaurant, opening on George Street, Edinburgh, this autumn. A limited run, Made in Scotland, finished with a dual branded Kestin and Ottolenghi broadloom label.

Three signature curved patch pockets, the breast pocket holds small essentials, the two lower pockets take bulkier items. Reinforced stitching, brass sail eyelets and herringbone cotton tape finish it off. Available in navy.

Exclusively at kestin.co.
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