Jamie Oliver’s Italian: Dining in Jamie’s Italian

Jamie Oliver is a well-known British chef over here. I am not sure if you are familiar about him but over here, he is mostly famous for his TV shows, cookbooks, a restaurant chain, and recently, a not-so-good remark about breastfeeding that earned the ire of Adele (eek!). To be honest, I think he meant well but probably the choice of words he used at the time was not right. Anyway, moving on.

If you are familiar with Jamie Oliver, then you are more likely familiar with Jamie’s Italian, the chef’s restaurant chain. Prior this visit, we have been here before and had a positive dining experience while we were there. Especially now that we have our little man eating with us, we have to be wise in choosing which place to eat out so to make sure there is something that he can eat as we have our meals, too.

We liked the ambiance inside not to mention that they are well-equipped with things to keep little ones busy. Apart from the usual crayons and coloring pads, they also have a binocular to play with! Pretty cool!

We were immediately seated and you can see that the place is really family-friendly as there are lots of families dining in. The staff was really attentive and very accommodating. As a matter of fact, my husband changed his mind which mains he wanted to eat and changed his order. The staff was very cheerful to tell us that he can accommodate the request since we also ordered appetizers to start – so there was time to make the change.

For our starter, we ordered a meat platter to share. I really liked the presentation but thought it was not practical. Similar to other restaurants, the ratio of the table and plates are not equally distributed (to me). And since there was an “artsy” flair to the presentation, it took a lot of space for just one dish so it was a bit challenging to try to keep it away from my toddler’s really active tiny hands! I have no complaints with the food in the platter, though. It was really yummy and it was a good call we decided to order just one appetizer because we are ordering a main dish separately.

My main dish was lamb ravioli. I love pasta and try to order dishes that I know I’ll have a hard time (or no chance) making at home. Initially, I really liked the dish  because it was really tasty. The sauce was rich and each piece of pasta filled with a generous portion of lamb. However, as I go through my plate, I found it was difficult to eat by myself. As I go through my plate, I found the tanginess from the lemon zest too overbearing. I know that lemon is typically used to put a “zing” of flavour on a pasta dish but I think for this one, there was just too much of it.

Overall, it was still a nice dining experience at Jamie’s. I will still go back there especially because of our son but might order a different main dish next time.