Ottolenghi

Well. The food is fine. That's about all I can say. It's not great. The hummus that they are famed for was obviously not tasted by the chef as it obviously desperately needed lemon juice. The poppy seed cornbread was heaven though. The chairs are ridiculously low for the tables which means everyone is straining to use their cutlery. Style over substance! It's the first restaurant that I have been to where they don't ask you how your meal was. It seems they have been carried away with their early success,

Love it! Best tasting food in Islington - delicious and healthy (except if you choose the cake). Especially at lunch. Worth the inevitable queue at the weekend. Or to avoid the queues go for breakfast or in the week.

One of the best places to eat in Islington. Highly recommended for breakfast or lunch, especially in the week when less busy... And the cakes are great to take away for special gifts.

We went to Ottolenghi's one evening at the suggestion of my wife who had read his books and is unlike me really into vegetarian cuisine. We had a lovely intimate candle lit table in the corner and the service from our young American waiter was,efficient,attentive, engaging and personable. Much of the seating is in long tables beautifully lit by silver candelabra..Our friends said they met a really interesting couple as a result, but if you want intimacy I suggest you book well in advance. The food, which was very fresh with some of it on display, is offered in a series of tapas sized dishes with both cold (from the counter) and hot(from the kitchen and taking longer to serve ) choices. These include.both meat and fish options as well as vegetarian. All the dishes were imaginative and superbly cooked/presented. I found my palate being delighted with taste combinations unique in my experience and they really worked! A real culinary adventure! They accidentally served us with one wrong dish(which proved to be very tasty) and when we casually pointed this out gave us an additional one on the house.without us even asking.My favourite vegetarian dish of the four was the Figs with pecorino,spicy macademia, mixed leaves and orange blossom dressing. My choice of our meat and fish dishes would be the Urfu chilli marinated lamb rump with aubergine garlic confit, nigella seeds and pickled apricot and carrot. Cold dishes varied in price from £8- £9.80 and hot from £10-12. the food was light enough for us choose and enjoy from an enticing range of sweets. The only downside was the wine list which was seriously overpriced. i was offered the almost same bottle of wine(albeit two years younger) the following night elsewhere at half the price. nevertheless this was a very enjoyable evening and we will definitely return next time we are in London. Judging from some of the faces seen in the restaurant it is gaining a first class reputation and based on our experience deservedly so!

What a rip off. Cooking is beautiful - no doubt about it - inventive and delicious - but no where on the website did it ever tell you that these prices are attached to tiny tapas size portions. It was truly shocking. I don't know if it is less expensive to order take away, but why punish the diners who decide to stay? The waitress cheerily told us that she always recommends that people get 5 dishes each (OK, if you don't mind paying close to £60 for salad and some warm dishes - good on you) but the rest of us will have to try to recreate these in normal size portions at home - buy the cookbook and don't bother with the restaurant.

The food is good, full-stop! We have the cookbooks at home and I've given them as gifts to international guests. I've bought cakes and salads as take-away's before and been for a 'table booked in advance' dinner service a few times and the food was always excellent. My upset is not with the quality of food, but with the poor and arrogant service who think nothing of keeping customers waiting (standing) for OVER an hour on a Sunday for lunch. Otto Lenghi don't take bookings for lunch, so people wait for as long as it takes. We were told we would be seated within 20min-30min. Nobody came to give us an update, asked us if we wanted to drink something, have a look at the menu etc. After what seemed like an eternity people left, it should have been our turn to be seated- finally, but the staff seemed in no rush to clear the table so we waited another 10min. Finally we were lead the table. I would have left ages ago but my friend wanted to stay and so I decided to make the most of it. What followed was the most unfriendly service I have experienced in a long time. On top of that we sat near the Air-Conditioning and I had freezing cold air blowing on my head. In short, the whole experience was a nightmare! Otto Lenghi seems to be falling short off their previous greatness. Maybe business is so good that they no longer care about customer service and experience? As more and more people pile into the place and happily spend their precious weekend waiting I wonder, am I the only one who expects a bit more for my money? A smile. A friendly waitress? Fast service? Someone who asks ' is everything to your satisfaction'? Good food alone is just not good enough, I'm sorry. To be fair I should say that when we complained whilst paying our bill (all I wanted was to get out of there asap - new customers in the waiting docks only too happy to take our seats) the manager did handle the complaint well, being very professional and offering us a free cake for desert which we agreed to take with us. That was at last a glimpse of customer service but as far as I am concerned 'too little, too late'. I will NEVER go back for lunch-service unless Otto Lenghi start taking bookings, handle the waiting system better and generally train their staff better. The staff in Pret a Manger are better trained and friendlier for Christ sake.

I went there on Monday night to celebrate my friend's birthday. I was surprised at how crowded it was for a Monday night, and we had to vacate our 7pm booking by 9pm to make way for the next sitting. We were totally gobsmacked at how expensive it was. The food, whilst delicious, averaged around £12 for a small, starter sized portion. To have a decent meal you would need three or four portions per head - which would have come to far more we had expected to pay. The cheapest bottle of wine (also delicious) was £19. The service was OK but nothing special. I really recommend Le Mercury across the road - equally delicious food and about a third of the price.

I'm not sure why everyone is being so mean about the customer service! I went to Ottolenghi on Tuesday after a play at the Almeida. It was busy, but the waiting staff were wonderful. Although, really, this should be about the food, which is just delicious. A varied menu with just the right balance between being full of choices but not overwhelming. We had some delicious lamb, some makerel and some butternut squash. All were excellent. I will be going back as soon as possible. In fact, hmm, I could go this evening...

I will strictly limit this review to those items (among those I tasted) for which objective standards of execution and presentation exist: a quiche and a pain au chocolat. One of the basic requirements of a quiche is that it should not be soggy; and soggy, unfortunately, was exactly what the quiche at Ottolenghi was: water from the vegetables had soaked the pastry. There are a number of ways to ensure this does not happen; it would not make sense to go into them here, except to state that all are easily accessible even to beginner cooks. That the kitchen staff at Ottolenghi should not have been taught them–or should not have not bothered to put them into practice–is really unfortunate. The pain au chocolat was excellent: it had evidently been cooked with superior-quality ingredients, and you could most definitely taste it. It was of course more expensive than what you can get in an ordinary bakery, but the product was, simply, incomparable. Unluckily it–like the quiche and all the food in the shop–was served at room temperature (I did ask for it to be warmed up, and was told this could not be arranged). As anybody can attest, the temperature at which a food is served affects the taste, flavour and texture of the food, and thus the overall experience, in a very considerable way. Of course, Ottolenghi can maintain that all the dishes he invented are meant to be enjoyed at exactly the temperature of his shop, which is indeed kept at that level expressly to bring out their unique personalities (however, in that case, it is quite surprising that in his books he should so often remind the reader to serve the food hot); however, serving quiches and pains au chocolat at room temperature is a serious solecism. I can imagine that it would be inconvenient for the staff at busy times to have to warm up all the food that is to be eaten warm (and the workflow–as well as parts of the shop–would probably have to be redesigned to make this possible) but that is what happens in eating places, from the humblest of charcuteries to the best-reviewed restaurants, all over the world (indeed, from the time fire was discovered, making it possible to eat warm food, our species has never looked back!) . And it happens for a reason. Creativity is one thing, rewriting universal rules to suit one's own convenience is quite another. People do not flock to Ottolenghi to have a quick lunch: what they are led to expect is a superior food experience; I found this evident disregard for the customer's enjoyment deeply disappointing.

What is all this slamming at the customer service? I went there last week and was treated very very lovely. Our waiter was very kind, expained the menue and also kept on filling up our water glasses without further ado. The food was excellent!