‘Great restaurants can’t thrive in Hampstead’: Ottolenghi reviewed

Ottolenghi is an Israeli deli co-owned by Yotam Ottolenghi, an Israeli Jew, and Sami Tamimi, a Palestinian Muslim. They met in Baker & Spice in London, where they bonded over the dream of persuading more British people to eat salad. This is an ideal story of co-existence (I have met a group of Israeli Jews and Arabs dieting for peace) and I thought the new Ottolenghi in Hampstead might be picketed by idiots shouting for peace but meaning war. (Martha Gellhorn was right about slogans. Never shout them: even ones you agree with.)

But this is Hampstead, not Bloomsbury, and there aren’t any pickets. Politics barely makes it here – I think it’s the hill – which is why mid-20th-century socialists loved it and bought idealised cottages from which to tell the working classes what to think.