Do we like Yotam Ottolenghi?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record, no harmful words or company found, and a quiet, late stance on Gaza that some wanted louder and others wanted different.
Ottolenghi was born in Jerusalem, did his army service in intelligence, then studied at Tel Aviv University and finished a master's in comparative literature. He worked as a sub-editor at Haaretz, then headed to the Netherlands and on to Britain in 1997, where he did a cordon bleu course. Not your usual celebrity chef's road: he says he left academia because he needed more immediate gratification.
In London he became head pastry chef at Baker & Spice, where he met Palestinian cook Sami Tamimi. A few years on, the pair and two partners opened the first Ottolenghi deli in Notting Hill, a place famous for gorgeous displays. A Guardian column, a string of cookbooks including Jerusalem, and a chain of London restaurants followed, and plenty of his former staff went on to start their own food businesses.
On the harm test we looked hard and found nothing: no words against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or anyone else, and no run of questionable collaborators. Where he has weighed in, it has been on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2021 he told The Times he thought “the occupation of the West Bank is the mother of all evils”.
The contested bit is Gaza. In May 2025 he posted to his Instagram followers that he couldn't stay quiet about food being withheld as a tool in conflict, backing an end to the fighting and unimpeded aid. Some readers were frustrated the post didn't mention the Israeli hostages, and pro-Israel campaigners reportedly put up a poster about them outside his Hampstead restaurant. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a brave step or as too cautious and too late.
In the 2026 interview he repeated that he doesn't think food should be used as a tool of war, and said he feels for both Palestinians and Israelis. He also admitted “I was perhaps a bit naive at times in how I wrote certain things” in Jerusalem, while saying he's proud of the book. That's a fair bit of reflection from someone who told one interviewer back in 2016 that politics isn't his field.
On the good-person test there's not much drama to report. We found no court rulings against him and no credible allegations from established outlets, and tabloid gossip isn't worth repeating. His longest partnership is with Tamimi, whom Channel 4 describes as his friend and long-time collaborator, and Tamimi himself has since spoken publicly about Gaza.