Jamie Oliver is undoubtedly one of the UK’s most famous Celebrity Chefs. He’s known for creating wholesome, healthy, homecooked food and has a whole range of cookbooks and recipies to prove it. In 2008, he expanded this further by opening Jamie’s Italian (which is pretty much what it sounds like – an Italian restaurant by Jamie!) in Oxford. Since then, it’s grown to over 30 chains, with even one in my hometown of Manchester. So, when I was invited along to review Jamie’s Italian Manchester, King Street, I was excited to go and see what the hype was all about.

The Manchester restaurant is located on King Street, one of the most high-end streets in Manchester city centre and home to many designer stores. The building itself used to be an old HSBC bank and is absolutely stunning; it is huge, with beautiful high ceilings and windows. Some of the original features have also been retained, such as a ‘vault room’ in the basement, which is quite literally the vault room where bankers used to lock up blocks of gold and treasures, now converted into a private dining area. The toilets are also each individual vaults and look typically Victorian (but very clean!) – I loved these vintage touches!

So, let’s get to the main dish (haha, geddit?) – the food! To be honest, I am not a starter person, I rarely ever get an appetiser and like to just get stuck in to the main event, so my visit to Jamie’s was no different. I brought two guests with me and after ordering, our meals arrived pretty quickly. To try as much as possible, instead of ordering three large plates, we went for one large plate, two small mains and two sides. 

My guests both went for daily specials, which the waitress was very knowledgable about and knew them in detail (in fact, it made me question whether these were REALLY changing specials – she knew a lot about them!). One went for a smoked salmon tagliatelle, and the other a black olive and anchovy spaghetti; in hindsight both fishy choices, but there seemed to be quite a lot of seafood on the menu. The salmon dish was a small plate, however, as you can see above it was a pretty good portion and quite enough to have as a main course. I am told that these were delicious!

For my choice, I went for a small portion of the Rigatoni Pomodoro, as this was the only true vegetarian option on the menu. Now, I am sure if you are a meat eater your experience may have been very different, but for me, I was disappointed. I knew when ordering that it would be a plain dish but there was quite literally no other vegetarian option on the menu (to be fair, the menu did say ‘speak to us if you’re vegan/vegetarian’ but there’s only so much fuss you can make when you’re already asked in to openly review the restaurant!). I didn’t want to cause a fuss so I just went with it, but it was literally just pieces of pasta in a tomato sauce with a bit of mascarpone. I had high expectations and this didn’t meet them, at all, which I feel is such a shame. Italian restaurants are usually a safe bet for vegetarian options – think of all the things you can do with vegetables and pasta, vegetables and pizza – and so I think it’s a real shame there was no creativity within this dish.

However, I have to say the sides made up for my disappointing main. Gotta admit, I pretty much committed ‘carbicide’ (FYI: death from too many carbs!) and ordered the Funky Chips (cooked in rosemary and garlic) and Cauliflower Fritters. The chips were good, but the cauliflower fritters were REALLY good. Like really. I’ve never had anything like them before and pretty sure battered and fried isn’t the healthiest way to eat a vegetable, but it tasted damn yummy. If you’re going out, go all out, I say!

Over all, I really enjoyed my visit to Jamie’s Italian – it was really interesting to see such a beautiful building (although I feel a few less tables would enhance the experience more and stop it feeling crowed) and the staff were incredible. Even before confessing I had been invited to review the restaurant, our waitress was absolutely fantastic; polite, knowledge and clearly very well trained at her job. Even when the restaurant didn’t have me booked in or a record of me being invited to review, she sorted this out without a fuss. The sides and dessert were delicious – the only downside was the vegetarian option.