Chef and Best-selling cookbook author will speak and give a live cooking demonstration from his new cookbook, Comfort
SUMMARY
- Mon, Oct 14 | 7:30 p.m. | The Granada Theatre
-
- World-renowned chef and author Yotam Ottolenghi demonstrates the power of food to bring people together in a mouthwatering live experience
- Signed copies of Comfort, the new cookbook from Ottolenghi, available for purchase from Chaucer’s
- Moderated by Ben Mims, former cooking columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a James Beard-nominated author of three cookbooks, including most recently Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World (2024)
- Related Thematic Learning Initiative event: Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles film screening and Q&A on Thursday, October 10 at 7 p.m. at Campbell Hall (Free, registration recommended)
- $38.50 – $68.50 / UCSB students $16 (Current student ID required)
- Tickets & Info: www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu or (805) 893-3535; or The Granada Theatre, (805) 899-2222
“No chef captures the flavors of the moment better than Yotam Ottolenghi.” Bon Appétit
“The most creative but also practical cook of this new culinary era – a 21st-century Escoffier.” The Wall Street Journal
SANTA BARBARA — UCSB Arts & Lectures presents An Evening with Yotam Ottolenghi on Monday, October 14 at 7:30 p.m. at The Granada Theatre. Spend a delicious evening with world-renowned chef Yotam Ottolenghi as he discusses his new book, Comfort, and prepares one of his dishes live on stage. The author of 10 multi-award-winning cookbooks and a regular contributor to The Guardian (U.K.) and The New York Times, Ottolenghi will share childhood stories, his passion for bold flavors and colorful ingredients, and his influences from across the world. Then, highlighting the way that food brings people together, he’ll combine culinary innovation with suggestions and questions from the audience to create a mouthwatering live experience. The evening will be moderated by Ben Mims, former cooking columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a James Beard-nominated author of three cookbooks, including most recently Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World (2024).
Related Thematic Learning Initiative event: Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles film screening and Q&A on Thursday, October 10 at 7 p.m. at Campbell Hall (Free, registration recommended)
Tomato and Pomegranate Salad | Ottolenghi 20
ABOUT YOTAM OTTOLENGHI
Yotam Ottolenghi is a celebrated chef and bestselling cookbook author. He is the restaurateur and chef-patron of six London-based delis, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants. He is the author of ten bestselling and multi-award-winning cookbooks. Ottolenghi 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.
For chef, writer, and restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi, food is about more than what we eat. It is about joy, pleasure and surprise. It is about a sense of place and home. It is about commonality, an act which brings people together. The popular chef stated, “It’s tragic that we are so good at adapting ourselves to different cuisines and enjoy being super international, yet we are not able to apply the same level of tolerance to the actual people that cook them.” Simply put, this philosopher of the kitchen is passionate about making people happy through food full of harmonious contradictions.
Ottolenghi is widely beloved for his beautiful, inspirational, and award-winning cookbooks, yet he had an unlikely beginning. In 1997, Ottolenghi completed a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in comparative literature at Tel Aviv University; his thesis was on the philosophy of the photographic image. That same year, he moved to Amsterdam, where he worked at a Dutch-Jewish weekly and considered getting his doctorate at Yale. Instead, and against the advice of his father, family and friends, he moved to London to study French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu. Soon, Ottolenghi found work as a pastry chef, and eventually met the Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi.
Ottolenghi and Tamimi discovered they had grown up just a few miles apart on opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Jerusalem. They became friends and eventual business partners, bonding over shared language and a joint “incomprehension of traditional English food.”
Ottolenghi’s debut cookbook, Ottolenghi, co-authored with Tamimi, was published in 2008. Nine more internationally bestselling volumes have followed: a collection of recipes exploring the flavors of his home-city, Jerusalem, with Tamimi (2012); the vegetable cookbooks Plenty (2010) and Plenty More (2014); a cookbook from his acclaimed London restaurant, Nopi(2015); a dessert cookbook, Sweet (2017); Ottolenghi Simple (2018); Ottolenghi Flavour (co-written with Ixta Belfrage); Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love (co-written with Noor Murad) and Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Extra Good Things (2022). His books have sold over 1.5 million copies in North America and 5 million worldwide. Ottolenghi now celebrates the 2024 release of his highly anticipated new cookbook, Comfort, his most personal work since his era-defining publications, Simple and Flavour.
Ottolenghi’s cookbooks have proven influential, with The New York Timesnoting they are widely imitated for their plain-spoken instructions and enticing photographs (overseen by Ottolenghi himself). They have been praised by Nigel Slater, David Lebovitz, Deborah Madison, Food & Wine and the Wall Street Journal. Mark Bittman said, “Plenty is among the most generous and luxurious non-meat cookbooks ever produced, one that instantly reminds us that you don’t need meat to produce over-the-top food.”
In 2014, the London Evening Standard noted Ottolenghi had “radically rewritten the way Londoners cook and eat.” While Bon Appétit wrote that he had “made the world love vegetables.” Jerusalem was awarded Cookbook of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals and Best International Cookbook by the James Beard Foundation. Ottolenghi’s books have been named among the best books of the year by the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR. A documentary film, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles, directed by Laura Gabbert, was released in theaters in 2020 and can be viewed on demand. Yotam Ottolenghi is an instructor with Masterclass, the streaming platform.
Ottolenghi grew up in Israel to parents of Italian and German descent, and spent childhood summers in Italy. Long based in London, where he co-owns an eponymous group of deli shops and the fine dining restaurants NOPI and ROVI, Ottolenghi spends much of his time creating and testing recipes for his weekly column in the Guardian and monthly column in The New York Times. When he is not cooking, he oversees the day-to-day running of his business and makes occasional television programs. Family life with his husband and two young sons and Pilates are much-loved distractions.
ABOUT UCSB ARTS & LECTURES
Founded in 1959, UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) is the largest and most influential arts and lectures organization between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A&L annually presents more than a hundred public events, from critically acclaimed concerts and dance performances by world-renowned artists to talks by groundbreaking authors and film series at UCSB and Santa Barbara-area venues. With a mission to “educate, entertain and inspire,” A&L also oversees an outreach program that brings visiting artists and speakers into local classrooms and other venues for master classes, open rehearsals, discussions and more, serving K-12 students, college students and the general public.
An Evening with Yotam Ottolenghi is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures
Event Sponsor: Martha Gabbert
Supporting Sponsor: Jane Eagleton
Tickets are $38.50 – $68.50 / UCSB students $16 (Current student ID required)
For tickets or more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535 or purchase online at www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu; or The Granada Theatre or (805) 899-2222.
UCSB Arts & Lectures gratefully acknowledges 2024-2025 Season Sponsor Sara Miller McCune.
UCSB Arts & Lectures gratefully acknowledges our Community Partners the Natalie Orfalea Foundation & Lou Buglioli for their generous support of the 2024-2025 season.