Confusion as Ottolenghi restaurant signage spotted in Edinburgh

The appearance of a signage advertising ‘Ottolenghi – Mediterranean & Middle Eastern street food’ on an restaurant site in Edinburgh prompted excitement from the city’s residents this week – but all was not as it seemed.

Hopes that celebrated restaurateur and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi was taking his restaurants and delis across the Scottish border proved unfounded, despite his name appearing in large letters on the city’s Leith Walk.

One tweet to the chef called for clarity saying “the people of Leith need to know”.

It has since been confirmed that the site is nothing to do with Yotam Ottolenghi or his business and The Caterer understands that lawyers have been consulted. A business using the name Ottolenghi in Leith appears not to have a website or social media pages.

Chef and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi opened his first café in London's Notting Hill in 2002. The business has since grown to seven London restaurants with a successful cookbook, retail and catering arm.

For the year to 31 March 2022, Ottolenghi saw turnover grow to £21.8m and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to £6.29m – resulting in a pre-tax profit of £5.9m, compared to a £260,198 loss the prior year. The business also repaid £1.5m of its £3.7m Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan.

In documents filed with Companies House, the group said competition for staff had been “fierce” and it was having to manage inflationary cost pressures by amending recipes, changing cooking techniques and, where necessary, increasing prices.

Over the last year, the company moved its production unit and online store warehouse to larger premises in north London, additional space which it said would enable the group to maintain further deli expansion. In July 2021 Ottolenghi opened its seventh site in Marylebone (www.thecaterer.com/news/ottolenghi-open-marylebone-deli), which it said was “trading well”, and it relocated its Motcomb Street site in Belgravia to what is now one of the group’s largest sites in Chelsea’s Pavilion Road (www.thecaterer.com/news/yotam-ottolenghi-chelsea-deli-restaurant-opening-2022) in January.

In August, the group also appointed Emilio Foa as its first chief executive to oversee “measured growth” of the business (www.thecaterer.com/news/ottolenghi-group-chief-executive-emilio-foa). The directors said: “We have also taken some learnings from the pandemic as it made us interrogate and critically review all our revenue streams, costs and processes. Our diversified revenue streams, across multiple channels, have proven invaluable in giving flexibility to our customers and reducing reliance on our delis and restaurants, having to adapt to tighter staff rotas we can now operate more efficiently without compromising our excellent levels of service and a thorough review of all our costs has left us with an agile, lean overhead base.”

*Image credit: Twitter: @mariaelenactq *