(in collaboration with Noam Bar) founded the eponymous delicatessen Ottolenghi in the Notting Hill district of London. The deli quickly gained a cult following due to its inventive dishes, characterised by the foregrounding of vegetables, unorthodox flavour combinations, and the abundance of Middle Eastern ingredients such as rose water, za'atar, and pomegranate molasses. When asked to explain his cooking philosophy, Ottolenghi said, "I want drama in the mouth." The Ottolenghi brand has since expanded to three more delis (in Islington, Marylebone and Chelsea), a formal restaurant in Spitalfields, a brasserie named NOPI in Soho, and a vegetable-centric restaurant named ROVI which opened in Fitzrovia in June 2018. In 2006, Ottolenghi began writing a weekly column for The Guardian titled "The New Vegetarian," though he himself is not a vegetarian and has sometimes noted where a vegetable-centric recipe would pair well with a particular cut of meat. Influenced by the straightforward, culturally-grounded food writing of Nigella Lawson and Claudia Roden, Ottolenghi's recipes rarely fit within traditional dietary or cultural categories. He explained that his mission is to "celebrat[e] vegetables or pulses without making them taste like meat, or as complements to meat, but to be what they are. It does no favour to vegetarians, making vegetables second best." His debut cookery book Ottolenghi: The Cookbook was published in 2008. Eight volumes have followed: the all-vegetable cookery books Plenty (2010), Plenty More (2014) and "Ottolenghi Flavour (2020)"; Jerusalem (2012); NOPI (2015); the dessert cookery book Sweet (2017); Ottolenghi Simple (2018); and most recently a series of Ottolenghi Test Kitchen (OTK) books co-authored with Noor Murad: "OTK: Shelf Love" (2021) and "OTK: Extra Good Things" (2022). Ottolenghi's bestselling cookery books have proven influential, with The New York Times noting that they are "widely knocked-off for their plain-spoken instructions, puffy covers, and photographs [that Ottolenghi] oversees himself, eschewing a food stylist". In 2014, the London Evening Standard remarked that Ottolenghi had "radically rewritten the way Londoners cook and eat", and Bon Appétit wrote that he had "made the world love vegetables". Ottolenghi has hosted three television specials: Jerusalem on a Plate (BBC4, 2011); Ottolenghi's Mediterranean Feast (More4, 2012); and Ottolenghi's Mediterranean Island Feast (More4, 2013). He served as a guest judge on the ninth (2017), eleventh (2019) and thirteenth (2021) seasons of the cooking game show Masterchef Australia. He had declined numerous guest-judge offers in the past and agreed to appear on Masterchef Australia