Rovi (Fitzgrovia), London - 8.5/10

The new Yotam Ottolenghi's restaurant, offering Middle Eastern modern tapas dishes with a focus on fermentation and cooking on fire

Crumpet Lobster Toast at Rovi

Overall evaluation: 8.5/10

Food quality/ taste: 9/10

Price: 8.5/10 (~£50 pp for a starter, main and dessert with a glass of wine)

Service: 9/10

Value for money: 8.5/10

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Being an avid vegetable eater, I could not try the new Ottolenghi's restaurant in Fitzgrovia - Rovi. Rovi is a fancy restaurant, serving mostly tapas style dishes inspired to the Middle East, with a particular focus on wood fired and fermented food.

The food is thought to be shared and they usually suggest 3-4 servings per person. The menu, however, offers different potential options across small snacks to get with a drink before dinner, small sharing plates (mostly vegetables), bigger seafood and meat dishes and a few choices for sides.

With Francesco we opted for the sharing option and ordered a few dishes each to then share. All the dishes were pretty well cooked and tasty and most of them were grilled on fire, which gave them a very nice smokey flavor.

Hot tomatoes with cold yoghurt and Urfa chilli

Among the dishes we liked the most I recall the hot tomatoes with cold yoghurt, Urfa chilli - really tasty and sweet - the peppers with white polenta and egg yolk bottarga and, finally, the celeriac shawarma with fermented tomatoes. We found the crumpet lobster toast a little bit disappointing instead, being too small and not particularly exciting for the price (£8 for 2). The dessert that Francesco got (plum and juniper doughnuts) was also pretty good according to him.

Overall I really liked Rovi, both for the nice and vibrant atmosphere and the tasty and unique flavours of some of the dishes. Also the service (we had a nice Italian lady serving us) was good and proactive with our asks.

Price wise, the place is not cheap, but what you could expect from a fancy place in central London (~£50 each for food, 2 glasses of wine and 2 sweet wines).

Overall I really suggest Rovi, especially given the uniqueness of some of the ingredients and cooking techniques, combined with a nice atmosphere and location of the restaurant!