Been travelling around SW England recently and came across Jamie’s Italian, a restaurant owned by “TV Chef” Jamie Oliver while in Bath. The restaurant has a no booking policy, luckily we were meeting some friends there and they got there early and started lining up for us.. so by the time we joined them we only had a 20 minute wait at the bar… not bad!
For starters, I had the Meat Anitpasti Plank; beef ‘bresaola’, tuscan fennel salami, pistachio mortadella and san daniele prosciutto served on a giant plank of wood. All very delicious!
Meat Antipasti Plank
So far so good, next up the mains! I chose to have the Good Old Grilled Steak which was an 8oz Sirloin that I chose to have medium rare, with mushroom sauce and dressed watercress. The steak was nice, a little more chewy than I expected (with a few bits of tendon - not so much that I had to spit some out though which is always good). As the name seemed to suggested, it was a good piece of steak - cooked simply - which is how I’ve always liked my steaks.
Good Old Grilled Steak
Finally, onto dessert… for this I had the Chocolate Brownie. This brownie included some banana too which served to counter the richness of the brownie. Very nice.
Chocolate Brownie
Overall, for first “celebrity chef” experience in the UK (even though the celebrity chef in question doesn’t cook there, as per usual) has been very positive. The produce tasted fresh and was not over-prepared. Dessert was probably the highlight for me. They also gave away free Christmas pudding to every guest - a great gesture. Jamie’s Italian defintely gets the thumbs up from me!