Jamie Oliver's restaurants go titsup.com

HAL9000

So... his restaurants have gone into adminestrone then?



(Gets coat)

RaymondLin

Dominic said:

Sorry to be disparaging but even the best Italian food in Italy is a fairly limited Lexicon.......having spent considerable time all over Italy and eating in wonderful places I would say that it's very hard to escape the Wheat , Cheese and Tomato combination in one form or another.....be it shaped as Pasta, Pizza, Piadina ..........sure you have the Tartufo of the Piedmont/ North ,the Porchetta of the Mezzogiorno and the Seafood of the South but that's nothing radical.
 What they do very well is use the very best simple ,natural peasant foods in the best possible way but on a world level there is far more complexity in Syrian / Lebanese food or the whole Asian menu. There are natural Fusions such as Morroccan where there has been a distinct French influence on the Arabic/North African menu creating some superb dishes.
 Sicilian food is far more exciting than most Italian as the Southern Sicilian is African infused and I would rather have good Arrancini than a typical Milanese Risotto or Cannolo with Sicilian Ricotta as opposed to a Northern Pannacotta.
 You can't argue with an aged Gorgonzola .........unless it's sat next to a good Roquefort and Reggiano can't beat an aged Manchego.......so France and Spain have them beat on the Cheese Front.
 Expecting to wake up next to a Horses head ....'cosa a binna disrespectin Nonna '

Thinking about it...you are not wrong.

The breakfast choices alone in a Cantonese Dim Sum breakfast has more variation in ingredients, cooking technique/methods and difficulty than most of Italian cuisine.   That's before you expand it into other breakfast options.

And that is limiting to 1 region, 1 time of day and 1 particular style of food.

Kilgore

I love Italian food, I've been to the Po valley in March for Pick Your Own. Spaghetti is much better fresh from the tree.

Majorscale

Went into Jamies Italian in Oxford shortly after it first opened. The food was amazing and worth the higher prices. Went back a few times over the years trading on the memories of that first visit, but each time the food appeared to get worse to the point that we never bothered again. 

Modellista

I remember being in Glasgow a few years ago and the queue for the newly-opened Jamie's was literally around the block.  Couldn't quite understand why - it's just pasta, and Oliver himself wasn't cooking it.

The restaurant business seems quite prone to whims of fashion - one week everyone who's anyone is desperate to be seen there, next week they're all going somewhere else, and you can't pay the rent.

The one booming part of the dining sector appears to be Deliveroo - restaurant food that you eat at home at takeaway prices.  Not that I fancy a carbonara that's been sweating in a cyclist's backpack for half an hour, but clearly lots do.

joneve

Modellista said:

I remember being in Glasgow a few years ago and the queue for the newly-opened Jamie's was literally around the block.  Couldn't quite understand why - it's just pasta, and Oliver himself wasn't cooking it.

The restaurant business seems quite prone to whims of fashion - one week everyone who's anyone is desperate to be seen there, next week they're all going somewhere else, and you can't pay the rent.

The one booming part of the dining sector appears to be Deliveroo - restaurant food that you eat at home at takeaway prices.  Not that I fancy a carbonara that's been sweating in a cyclist's backpack for half an hour, but clearly lots do.

Deliveroo is completely destroying Hospitality at the minute as it's driving down margins. Amazon have just invested a fuckload of cash in them too, so it's not going away any time soon. I can only think that they will utilise the delivery workforce that Deliveroo have to offer up quicker/same day deliveries. 

Heartfeltdawn

stickyfiddle said:

Italian was genuinely great when it first started. The Oxford one was the first opened and had queues around the block; compared to Bella Italia a few doors up it was miles better.

Then private equity got involved and quality went to shit. I haven't been to one in a few years but I've heard some horror stories.

So have I. When one particular venue first opened, the food was of a decent quality but subsequent visits saw a massive drop in quality and portion size. It was about the same time that I noticed how the recycling bags left on the street for the green bin lorry to collect toward 5pm each day would feature kitchen porters waiting by them. I was puzzled by this. The reality was that the recycling bins had a lot of empty vegetable cans and the porters were there to make sure people didn't poke around in there. Tinned asparagus... yum. 

Lodious said:

For me, the real problem with these type of places is that the food is no better than a decent ready meal. It's just so expensive for what it is. I've eaten at Jamie's twice with the family and it's close to 100 quid for the 5 of us for totally forgettable food. I'm actually amazed they have lasted as long as they have. 

Reading some of the staff interviews since administration sounds very familiar to an experienced chef. The biggest problem is that they operated on the assumption of large numbers of covers. The venue I knew well had to do 400 covers in order to break even so about 5k per day. 

Imagine a 12 to 10 food service day. You're going to need to give chefs three hours prep time before service minimum. At least an hour or two clean down time afterwards. That means you're paying for back of house labour from 9am to 12pm. Because you're offering food of this nature, you can't rely on one or two people adept with a microwave or able to dump frozen bags in a bain marie. You need a big kitchen crew. Accordingly, a big kitchen crew is generally mirrored by a big front of house crew.

When you try to cut labour costs and keep the same opening hours, you're asking one chef to do 1.5 chef's work and asking one floor staff member to wait on 10-12 tables at once. Service and food suffers. 
 
When your labour costs are high, you try to reduce food costs. Ooops, that's not happening with the menu you have and where you source your ingredients. As JI restaurants followed a spec menu, you then look to reduce costs by changing the menu: smaller portion sizes, perhaps change a cut of meat for something different, all the usual tricks. 

Since I moved to London late 2017 after cheffing around Bath and Bristol for the best part of 7 years, the biggest trend within London food for me wasn't food itself: it was downsizing of property. Chain places moving from one place to a smaller cheaper place, independents doing likewise. JI didn't really do this and it's notable that the ones still open now are the Gatwick franchises with a totally captive audience. 

Zoolooter

No surprises a TV chef failed at producing quality food consistently for joe public. Sampled a few of his restaurants and the food was  very average and overpriced. 

Just lash a bit of chilli in........

RandallFlagg

Bish Bash Bosh...run out of Dosh

They should have had Turkey Twizzlers on the menu

Zoolooter

RandallFlagg said:

Bish Bash Bosh...run out of Dosh

They should have had Turkey Twizzlers on the menu

Funny!

RandallFlagg

Zoolooter said:

RandallFlagg said:

Bish Bash Bosh...run out of Dosh

They should have had Turkey Twizzlers on the menu

Funny!

but I do feel for the staff, redundancy is horrible.

breakstuff

HAL9000 said:

So... his restaurants have gone into adminestrone then?



(Gets coat)

The puns on this forum really have gone pasta joke. 

HAL9000

Sorry - it’s just a fusilli jokes...

Strat_a_tat_tat

The thing I never understood about Jamie's Italian is...

... "Jamie's Italian" is simply not true. Jamie's not Italian... but I guess the punters wouldn't have gone for "Jamie's English"

EricTheWeary

Strat_a_tat_tat said:

The thing I never understood about Jamie's Italian is...

... "Jamie's Italian" is simply not true. Jamie's not Italian... but I guess the punters wouldn't have gone for "Jamie's English"

Apparently Jamie's a bit of a Knob didn't go over well at the focus groups. 

He put his name on something which he seems to have little control over and as a result harmed his own brand worthiness. 

fields5069

I've only been to one good Italian restaurant, in Guildford, but loads of good pizza/pasta places. Jamie's always seemed full on a weekend in Cardiff, so I don't know where it all went wrong.

Fortheloveofguitar

We had one in Cheltenham that shut a while back. Was very hit and miss and bloody expensive for what it was 

And everything on the menu had truffle oil lol 

Snap

Dominic said:

Sorry to be disparaging but even the best Italian food in Italy is a fairly limited Lexicon.......having spent considerable time all over Italy and eating in wonderful places I would say that it's very hard to escape the Wheat , Cheese and Tomato combination in one form or another.....be it shaped as Pasta, Pizza, Piadina ..........sure you have the Tartufo of the Piedmont/ North ,the Porchetta of the Mezzogiorno and the Seafood of the South but that's nothing radical.
 What they do very well is use the very best simple ,natural peasant foods in the best possible way but on a world level there is far more complexity in Syrian / Lebanese food or the whole Asian menu. There are natural Fusions such as Morroccan where there has been a distinct French influence on the Arabic/North African menu creating some superb dishes.
 Sicilian food is far more exciting than most Italian as the Southern Sicilian is African infused and I would rather have good Arrancini than a typical Milanese Risotto or Cannolo with Sicilian Ricotta as opposed to a Northern Pannacotta.
 You can't argue with an aged Gorgonzola .........unless it's sat next to a good Roquefort and Reggiano can't beat an aged Manchego.......so France and Spain have them beat on the Cheese Front.
 Expecting to wake up next to a Horses head ....'cosa a binna disrespectin Nonna '

I'd disagree in part. There is more to Italian food than wheat cheese an tomato. You are missing out most secondi here. Meat, fish, they do a lot more than pasta and pizza. Like most established civilisations, their food has creativity and diversity in spades. But yes, there is a simplicity at the core, fresh sparse combinations that work fantastically. But, you can say that of many country's cuisines. Traditional French food is simple, as is Asian food. Asian food can be very simple indeed.

cheese - well surely that's down to personal taste isn't it? I'd have a quality Lancashire over any manchego/rocquefort, insert whatever. IMO, a proper quality Cheddar takes a lot of beating. I think we do better cheese than any country.

joneve

Fortheloveofguitar said:

We had one in Cheltenham that shut a while back. Was very hit and miss and bloody expensive for what it was 

And everything on the menu had truffle oil lol 

Location didn’t help it either. 

We’re fortunate enough to have loads of decent eateries in Cheltenham nowadays 

LoFi

shrinkwrap said:

Went to an Ivy Cafe not long ago, spent a good deal more but it was well worth it. 

Interesting - one opened up in my town a year ago, and reviews have been mixed at best. While most people have rated the service and ambience, the general opinion seems to be that the food is "High St Brasserie" quality (think Brasserie Blanc or Cote), but significantly more expensive.

(Obviously, there are some idiots that think they're going to get food of the same standard as *The* Ivy, but I'm not talking about them)