Yotam Ottolenghi's most personal restaurant — not the delis (which are excellent) or NOPI (which is polished), but the Fitzrovia dining room where vegetables are fermented, smoked, grilled, and treated with the kind of attention that most restaurants reserve for protein. The cooking is vegetable-forward without being vegetarian: meat and fish appear but they're supporting cast to the carrots, beetroot, and brassicas that have been fermented for weeks or smoked over woodchips. The room is open, bright, and deliberately casual. Ottolenghi's influence on British home cooking is immeasurable; Rovi is where you eat what happens when those ideas are executed by a professional kitchen at full capacity.
Location
Fitzrovia, London
Insider Intel
The sharing plates — Rovi is designed for the centre of the table. The fermented vegetables (whatever's current), the smoked beetroot, and any dish involving the wood-fired oven. The bread with the various dips. Trust the seasonal specials. The cocktails are surprisingly good.
Dinner for the full menu and the room at its liveliest. Lunch is calmer. The Fitzrovia location is central to everything — Oxford Street, the BBC, Regent's Park.
Reservations recommended. 59 Wells Street, Fitzrovia. Oxford Circus and Goodge Street tubes. Sharing plates £10-18. Vegetable-forward but not exclusively vegetarian. The Ottolenghi delis (nearby on Marylebone High Street) are a different experience. Cash and cards.