ROVI.

ROVI

Five dishes on this menu carry the first name of the cook who developed them, and one salad takes the name of the group's own kitchen garden in Haringey.

Why go

For a kitchen that ferments and grills and then tells you so on the card. ROVI states the whole thing in one sentence: it celebrates vegetables from root to tip, with fire and fermentation at the heart of everything we do, on a seasonal menu built in collaboration with small producers, local growers, and our kitchen garden at Wolves Lane in North London (Ottolenghi). The garden earns its own dish, the Wolves Lane salad.

Read the rest of the card and the technique is visible. Max's pickles and ferments open it. Stein's celeriac shawarma arrives with bkeila and fermented tomato. The kitchen cures beetroot into a pastrami. Then the fire takes over: hispi cabbage grilled and buried in porcini and almond and chestnut butter, a red gurnard skewer from Torbay, a whole Brixham brill with burnt aubergine and berbere butter. The bar runs the same idea into the glass, with a gin made for the room by 58 and Co and a martini they will finish with the kitchen's pickled red onions.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the celeriac shawarma, then something off the grill. The pickles and ferments first, to see the range.
• Avoid: the middle run of tables. Ask for the side or a bar seat.

What locals & experts say

• Gavin Hanly, Hot Dinners (August 2018), on what the room was built to do: This restaurant sees a focus around fermentation and fire... And they're placing huge importance on sourcing and low waste too.2 On a dish, the crumpet lobster toast with kumquat and chilli sauce is essentially a very high-end version of prawn toast.
• Hanly again, on where to sit, which is still the most useful line anyone has written about the room: some of the tables are quite close together, particularly along the central section. We think either sitting by the side, or ideally on one of the bar counter seats are the best bet.2
• Nobody has assessed it since. No bylined review after 2018 surfaced on 1 August 2026, and no chef names it in the 622 rows of London industry recommendations held here. That silence is why this entry's confidence is low.

Good to know

• Where: 59 Wells Street W1T 3PT, Fitzrovia.
• Booking: recommended, and the bar and window stools take people when the room is full.
• The bar is a reason on its own: a bespoke gin, seasonal serves, and a martini with the kitchen's pickled onions in it.
• Operator: the Ottolenghi group, and this is its technique-driven room rather than a rollout format.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 5, Westminster, inspected 30 October 2025. Components 0, 5 and 5, where higher is worse. Clean and recent.3

Verdict

should-visit — The menu here credits the cook who built the dish. Stein's celeriac shawarma comes with bkeila and fermented tomato, Ella's Jerusalem mixed grill is the vegan one, Max gets his name on the pickles and ferments. That is a kitchen with a ferment station and a grill doing the work, and it says so plainly: vegetables from root to tip, with fire and fermentation at the heart of it, on a seasonal menu built with small growers and the group's own kitchen garden at Wolves Lane in Haringey, which turns up on the card as a salad. The fire runs through the mains, from hispi cabbage with porcini and chestnut butter to a whole Brixham brill with berbere butter. The bar is a programme rather than an afterthought: a bespoke gin made with 58 and Co, and a martini they will finish with the kitchen's own pickled red onions. Gavin Hanly clocked the shape of it in 2018 as a focus on fermentation and fire with huge importance placed on sourcing and low waste. That was eight years ago and it is still the only independent read anyone has published, which is why this holds at should-visit.