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Jamie's Italian
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© David Loftus
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By Guy Dimond
Phone this restaurant to make a booking, and it redirects you to the website. Which states ‘We want you to visit us when it suits you... rather than taking bookings, we suggest that you just come along.’ Which we did, to find a queue stretching out onto the pavement at 4pm on a Sunday. Eventually we were seated at the bar for 20 minutes, admiring the Jamie merchandising (gift vouchers, books, olive oil etc), before being led through to the dining area.
Jamie’s Italian purports to serve ‘good food for everyone, no matter what’ – ie even if you’re not minted enough to afford the £70 per head it costs to eat at Fifteen, his flagship restaurant. This branch of the growing chain is certainly a big hit in Kingston, five months after opening. The feel was frenetic as the young waiting staff rush around, and the din of diners and rock muzak doesn’t exactly make a meal here a relaxing experience.
The food’s decent though, as long as you’re happy with burgers, chicken caesar salad, and other crowd-pleasing dishes that wouldn’t look out of place in an Italian-American diner, or even a shopping mall in the US.
Credits for Jamie’s one-time mentor, Gennaro Contaldo (formerly of the now-closed Passione restaurant), are also generously sprinkled across the menu. ‘Gennaro’s festive lasagne’ was merely average of its type; but his orange cheesecake was a good example. One of the many main courses was that 1970s classic ‘chicken cooked under a brick’ – a proper, well-reared chook, of course, one of several main courses using the same retro cooking technique. The wine list is brief, mid-priced, and Italian with the organic house wines (£14.95), transported in Tetrapaks.
Staff training needs a lot more work, if our visit was anything to go by. Our first waitress had no idea what our three fancy olive oils were (£1.50 supplement) – so she guessed and made it up (getting them wrong). Then her shift ended, so we got waitress number two, who plonked our menus down onto tables that needed a wipe (which probably explains why all the menus we saw were soiled). The hand-held credit card machine only worked on the fourth attempt, waitress two adding ‘this one never works properly’.
Jamie’s Italian tries to be to restaurants what Gap is to fashion – sensible, fair value, risk-averse, lower- to mid-range. This suburban branch appears to be coining it as a result. But if you want proper Italian food and hospitality, look elsewhere.Time Out London Issue 2018: April 23-28 2009
Time Out reviews restaurants anonymously and pays for meals. Of course, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or independence of user reviews.
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I went to Jamie's for my birthday, and was pleasantly pleased. I had been thinking postitive thoughts throughout the day (along the lines of 'please don't disappoint) and I have to say I wasn't. The prosecco was quaffable, the plank of antipasti well presented and the contents just the right side of fridge cool, while the chicken under a brick obviously used a quality bird, rather than the bland meat you normally get on the high street. So the sauce was a little bland, but the chips were also very good. Only downsides: being bombarded by 80s rock and pop began to rankle after half an hour, while an order of cognac seemed to fox the waiter, until he eventually traced a suitable brandy stashed in the darker recesses of the bar.
Took my mum to Jamie's Kingston for her birthday.
I had steak and she had chicken. The steak was nice but I would have expected better quality for £12 and all it came with was a handfull of rocket leaves. Chips were £2.50 and came in a tiny pot - about 10 chips in total.
My mums chicken looked OK at first, until she turned it over and saw that it was completely black, it was supposed to be grilled not chargrilled! It looked like they had tried to hide it by covering it in sauce and turning it over!
She sent it back and they bought out another one - all seemed Ok again until she cut into it and realised it was raw! She refused to eat anything else in there although they offered us a free dessert and coffee.
I must say though the waitress who served us was excellent, she seemed shocked by the incompetence of the chef and was very polite and apologetic, we also spoke to the manager who was very polite. He seemed like he was used to dealing with complaints. It seems we were lucky with the staff from reading the other reviews!
We declined the offer of a free dessert as were worried about the standards of cooking there - I mean chicken is pretty basic!
Our meal and drinks were on the house in the end (we did leave a tip for the waitress), but we really had an awful meal there. I would not reccomend this restaraunt to ANYONE!
Big fan of Jamie's but VERY disappointed. Olives really good but most of the food was below standard. Pork kebabs were awful and didn't look how they were described. They were dry and looked like cheap frozen food. We will not be returning to this 'pack them in and get rich quick' restaurant.
I have to disagree. Jamie's is excellent. The food is great, fantastic ingredients and great chefs. I was also impressed by the staff and the wine. Perhaps it was teething problems?