Crowd Pleaser: An Evening with Yotam Ottolenghi

Spend a delicious evening with Yotam Ottolenghi as he blends live cooking, storytelling, and audience interaction in a warm, insightful stage event that explores the pleasures and pressures of feeding others. Seated between an armchair and a cooking station, Ottolenghi unpacks a seemingly bottomless bag of ingredients while delving into the emotional and practical challenges home cooks face—from impressing in-laws to accommodating picky eaters.   

The evening moves between cooking demonstrations, humorous audience polls, and confessional slides drawn from real followers' dilemmas. Ottolenghi shares personal anecdotes about his children, kitchen failures, and shifting culinary ideals, offering reassurance and tactical advice in equal measure. He champions a modular, stress-free approach to meals built on a few dependable dishes like roasted chicken, potatoes, and vinaigrettes, all elevated by vibrant condiments. With warmth and wit, he encourages experimentation, celebrates imperfection, and emphasizes that cooking—at its best—is an act of love. 

Yotam Ottolenghi is a celebrated chef and bestselling cookbook author. He is the restauranteur and chef-patron of six London-based Ottolenghi delis, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants. He is the author of ten bestselling and multi-award-winning cookbooks. Yotam has been a weekly columnist for the Guardian (UK) for over sixteen years and is a regular contributor to The New York Times. His commitment to the championing of vegetables, as well as ingredients once seen as ‘exotic’, has led to what some call ‘The Ottolenghi effect’. This is shorthand for the creation of a meal which is full of color, flavor, bounty, and surprise.

Yotam Ottolenghi latest cookbook is COMFORT (published by Ebury in the UK and by Ten Speed Press in the US and Canada). Ottolenghi’s COMFORT is a celebration of food and home; of the connections we make and pass on as we cook, from place to place and from generation to generation.

Pre-order your signed copy of COMFORT and other Yotam Ottolenghi titles through our valued partner, The Cookbook Co. Cooks . Books and additional merchandise can also be purchased in the lobby at the event.

*Please note that Mr. Ottolenghi will not be signing books following the presentation.