Last Updated on December 20, 2024
ROVI brings winter cheer with Ottolenghi flavours
4.5 out of 5.0 stars
In the runup to Christmas or January Sales, you may well find yourself shopping in the Oxford Street area of London and in need of a good lunch to restore your flagging energy. ROVI is not far from the madding crowd, but it is one of the lovely restaurants comprising the Ottolenghi stable. Unlike the Ottolenghi delicatessen-based restaurants with a huge salad selection and enormous meringues in the windows, ROVI is a (mostly) vegetable-based eatery where plants are given an opportunity to shine.
ROVI is located in Fitzrovia, a neighbourhood north of Oxford St with many excellent restaurants. Nowadays, vegetarian-focussed restaurants are a growing genre, but this was less the case when it opened in 2018. Ottolenghi has always been a trendsetter. I ate there when it opened and recall ordering dishes such as grilled red cabbage with gorgonzola and grapes, celeriac shawarma and the like. Although one could cook these at home as the recipes appeared in Ottolenghi’s Guardian column at the time, it was a treat to have them prepared by professionals. Six years later, I was delighted to be invited to review the latest seasonal menu.
The restaurant is well sized and its design remains contemporary and elegant. A wall of glass looks out onto Wells Street and lets in a great deal of light even though darkness started to creep in while we ate our dessert. That is wintertime for you, but it makes one feel happy to be indoors in such a cheerful atmosphere. There is a large central bar in the main area of the restaurant and a side section where we were seated in front of the large windows.
Chunky wooden tables have oddly low chairs – easily resolved by requesting a cushion – and there is a lot of travertine, glass and plants. Floor-to-ceiling shelves are laden with Ottolenghi-branded goodies you can buy to take home, in fact, you could do all your Christmas shopping for foodies right here at ROVI. Near the open kitchen, there is a wonderful display of pickles and ferments in enormous jars. It’s a most convivial space which was packed with diners on a freezing Monday lunchtime and yet the hubbub was not overly loud.
My companion and I were both eschewing alcohol and were therefore particularly impressed with the tempting range of non-alcoholic drinks on offer. From a list of eight options, we chose two mocktails, each of which was refreshing. A-mock-icillin combined Feragaia and Botiver with honey, lemon and ginger. Bound to banish any winter chills. My companion had a salt & melon spritz which was beautifully pink and garnished with a generous slice of grapefruit. This contained Pentire Seaward & Coastal Spritz, melon, lemon grass and 0% sparkling wine. It is easy to stay off the booze when there are drinks of this quality on offer.
The menu is short enough to feel contained but has sufficient range to please all palates. It is divided into nibbles, small and large plates and desserts with a vegan option in each category. While the dishes are mainly vegetarian, there is a grilled octopus, fish, a roast chicken and a beef option. The kitchen gets its vegetables from the Ottolenghi kitchen garden at Wolves Lane in North London as well as through collaboration with local growers and regenerative producers. The plethora of veg is prepared root to tip, much like the nose-to-tail philosophy of its carnivorous peers. Ferments and cooking over fire are further features of its cuisine, two more hugely popular drawcards for contemporary diners.
We began with a nibble plate of cauliflower stem goujons, yoghurt and caper sauce. The benefit of being part of a no-waste, restaurant empire, is that the kitchen at ROVI receives the cauliflower off-cuts from all the Ottolenghi delis and restaurants. It seems to hark back to fried fish or chicken goujons but in fact put my companion in mind of chips. She loved them. The tender stems – they are boiled in buttermilk, butter and caraway seeds – wore a crunchy coating and the accompanying sauce was almost like a tzatziki.
Two dishes from the seven-long list of small plates arrived next. My favourite was the beetroot pastrami, honey mustard, and dill pickles. The dish wore its East European roots with pride and was attractive and very satisfying. Artfully presented – a wide yellow slick of honey mustard-like on an artist’s palette, a pile of beautiful, green dill pickle slices, and finally crimson beetroot chunks perched on a bed of cream-coloured pickled cabbage. The beetroot had a great depth of flavour having had the pastrami treatment. A very well-executed interpretation of the traditional pastrami with its accoutrements.
The second dish was buckwheat & mushroom dumplings, lemon prune broth, and herb salsa. Another dish from the East European repertoire, three dumplings bathed in a spicy broth with pieces of prune floating around. Topped with a generous herb salsa, this dish was hearty and very filling. Perfect for winter.
The large plates really are true to their description – and are meant to be shared. The four options include smoked beef, chicken, Jerusalem mixed grill (vegetarian) and one fish option. Brixham whole brill, burnt aubergine, berbere butter, chervil, capers is the loveliest fish I have eaten for some time. Brilliant brill. The fish is prepared on the charcoal grill which imparts a wonderful flavour to the skin – a part of the fish I usually discard but in this case, ate every last scrap. A huge fish – enough for four but two of us managed it somehow – was served on the bone in a pool of berbere butter and covered with a layer of burnt aubergine and strewn with chervil. It looked mightily impressive. We managed to fillet it at the table, but help is available should you prefer. The fish was perfectly cooked, the thick white flesh and the slightly tart aubergine making for a very delicious combination.
The side dishes were also good. We loved the pink fir potatoes which were served on a butter bean aioli and topped with vegan ‘nduja.
They were like small roasties which we dipped into the butter beans. Fab. Mix greens were virtuously emerald in colour, retaining some crunch and popping with polyphenols. The dish was doused in white soy and topped with a hazelnut dukkah which added textural contrast, colour and complex flavour.
To accompany this mighty main course, we returned to the non-alcoholic list and I enjoyed a glass of 0% sparkling Riesling while my companion chose a Picante 0% – Pentire Adrift, jalapeño, ginger, agave, citrus, tajin (a Mexican seasoning that was pressed onto the outside of the glass).
We really ought to have stopped at this point because we were replete and there was no need to proceed to the dessert menu. However, on we went and from a list of five options we chose one each. Chocolate & tahini fondant with Fernet-Branca ice cream – yes it has alcohol but does that even count if it’s in a pudding – might sound far too heavy after a large meal. Yet, this was surprisingly light. Warm, gooey, and served with a small quenelle of ice cream, it was a fitting end to a rather fine meal.
Apple and blackberry crumble cake, sherry, crème fraiche ice cream was a generous sphere of cake with a wholesome, oaty topping and a gorgeous ice cream. A bowl of that on its own would have sufficed for dessert.
Coffee and a pot of fresh mint tea brought an excellent lunch to a close. By the time we left, darkness had fallen and we walked up streets filled with Christmas lights and adorned trees. The winter menu at ROVI has kicked off my December on just the right note. Warm and friendly service in a convivial space, hearty vegetable-focussed food with plenty for all tastes, well executed.
ROVI,
Can’t make it to an Ottolenghi restaurant? We heartily recommend the Ottolenghi recipe books – check our review of Test Kitchen, Shelf Love, of Test Kitchen, Extra Good Things and of Flavour
