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.
