Jamie Oliver is coming to St Martin’s Courtyard this summer, a bread roll’s throw from the site of his first tentative steps into the world of professional cooking, to open a branch of Jamie’s Italian. His talks to CGJ about Italian food, working with his mentor and why Jamie’s Indian isn’t on the agenda…
The last time Jamie Oliver had a job in Covent Garden it was as a lowly teenage novice, learning his trade as a pastry chef at Antonio Carluccio‘s much-loved Neal Street Restaurant, working the kind of hours that even a junior doctor would baulk at. Now Jamie’s back in town, but this time his role is a rather different one – as the towering one-man brand behind the expanding Jamie’s Italian restaurant empire.
The first branch of Jamie’s Italian opened in Oxford in 2008, welcomed by long queues, critical acclaim and, more surprisingly, not a single TV spin-off. The idea was a simple one – take the kind of simple, pared-down, flavour-packed Italian cooking that made Jamie famous in the first place, and offer it for affordable prices in the kind of informal, convivial atmosphere you’d associate with this most bubbly and unpretentious of chefs. This summer the chain, which has burgeoned over the past two years, is set to open a branch in the exciting new St Martin’s Courtyard development, alongside four other new restaurants and a whole host of boutique retailers.
When the restaurant opens in June, it won’t only be Jamie who finds himself taking a walk down memory lane. Key to the success of the chain has been the involvement of the Basildon boy’s long-time mentor Gennaro Contaldo, the charismatic Italian who worked as Carluccio’s head chef at Neal Street and who took the hyperactive young pastry chef under his wing. The two have remained close ever since, and their shared commitment to bringing high quality, authentic Italian food to the high street means that their return to Covent Garden – older, wiser and in Jamie’s case about a million times more famous – will be a welcome one.
CGJ: What would you say is the central concept behind Jamie’s Italian?
JO: Essentially it’s to make sure you get a £40 meal for £20. The love and the care we put into everything – from the sourcing of the ingredients to the staff training to the interiors – really, we should be charging more. But we can keep the prices competitive because we’re busy, which is really humbling, but also exciting because we know people come back again and again.
How would you describe the food?
It is authentic Italian, delicious, and high quality. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Every few weeks, I sit down with Gennaro – my mentor – and Jules who is the executive head chef and we try to think of ways to make things even more delicious using the new season’s ingredients. It’s one of my favourite days, when we have those meetings.
Your name is central to the whole branding of Jamie’s Italian. How is your own personality and approach to food reflected in the restaurant?
I think the public trust me to give them something that’s good value, something they can go and tell their mates and family about and they won’t be let down by. I have a say in the food, of course, and the locations and the staff training so basically, when it comes to Jamie’s Italian, I’m all over it.
The restaurants seem to really be taking off. Were you expecting it to become a chain when you first conceived it?
Yes, absolutely. We opened the first restaurant on pretty much the first day of the recession. Was I nervous? Yes. But when we had queues outside day after day after day, I knew the public completely got where Jamie’s Italian was coming from and that made it easier to open in Bath and Kingston and Cardiff and everywhere else and now Covent Garden. We’re up to 12 restaurants now, with another four to open this year and we’ve still got people queuing outside the first one so we must be doing something right. We’ve even got some of our high street competitors coming in to watch how we do things.
History would suggest that the big danger of expanding into a large chain is that the quality and individuality of restaurants can suffer. How can you prevent that from happening to yours?
We choose our managers and chefs very carefully and the thing about Jamie’s Italian is that you can get different specials in each restaurant – local fish dishes in Brighton for example – but you also get the favourites in every restaurant. I like to pop into the restaurants to make sure things are as they should be and Gennaro does the same.
What do you want someone to feel when they leave one of your restaurants?
That they want to come back soon.
Your first job after catering college was at Carluccio’s Neal Street Restaurant in Covent Garden. Has Antonio’s approach to Italian food been an influence on Jamie’s Italian?
Gennaro’s more than Antonio’s, to be honest, although Antonio is a great chef. But when I was leaving college, a mate of mine called Marco told me that there were only two people who could teach me the secrets of making great pasta – his dad and Gennaro Contaldo at Neal Street. So I went down to Neal Street and asked for a job straight away. It just so happened they had an opening on the pastry section.
Are your memories of Covent Garden good ones? Was it an enjoyable time of your life? What stands out for you?
It was hard work. I was getting about two hours sleep at one point. Because I was on pastry, I never used to see Gennaro because he used to come in at about 3am after I’d finished my shift. But I was determined to learn from him so I used to do my shift and then stay behind and wait for him to come in, make bread and pasta until about 7am and then go home for two hours before I had to come back for my lunch shift.
When you thought about opening your own restaurants, did you always have the idea of opening a place here, where your professional career started?
I remember going to see Gennaro one day about 15 years ago and I promised him that I’d open a little place at some point in the future and he’d be a part of it and I’d make sure he didn’t have to work so hard. Well he’s still working hard, and he loves it, but we never really planned for it to come to Covent Garden – originally it was going to be university towns up and down the country, but we found a brilliant site in St Martin’s Courtyard and that was too good to pass up.
You have travelled a lot and sampled many different cuisines. Can you imagine opening restaurants that bring the food of any other country to British high streets?
Italian is my great passion – I always say I should have been born Italian – but I absolutely love Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French food too. If you saw the Jamie Does… series or book, you’ll know I was really surprised by the food of Sweden and Morocco. But I wouldn’t bring any other food type onto the high street. Jamie’s Indian doesn’t sound quite right and there are so many brilliant Indian family businesses that do it better than I ever could.
If you had to recommend just one Italian dish for some kind of Nobel Prize for top nosh, which one would it be?
That’s hard. I’ve got a soft spot for rotolo, which is a rolled pasta dish that you cook in muslin. It was the dish I was cooking all those years ago at the River Café when I was filmed for that BBC documentary. Suddenly after one rotolo I was getting phone calls from TV producers wanting me to make a series. And look what that all led to…
Jamie’s Italian
St Martin’s Courtyard
Tags: Caluccio's, Italian food, Jamie Oliver, Jamie's Italian, St Martins Courtyard