Jamie's Italian, Cheltenham > Reviews (1)

Jamie's Italian is a restaurant in a Cheltenham run as part of Jamie Oliver's chain. There was a group of 10 of us on this occasion and we were celebrating my best friend's hen party! I had heard mixed reviews in the past about this chain so I wasn't entirely sure about it.

The restaurant is in an old courthouse. I only found this out afterwards as the whole place was quite dimly lit. The building itself is quite nice and authentic Regency styled. We were to be dining on the second floor and this involves a narrow and twisting staircase, not the best after a few cocktails! There is also a dining area on the ground floor. The loos are down yet another staircase in the basement. I presume there must have been disabled loos easy accessible somewhere but I didn't see any.

Our group of 10 was sat upstairs in a little room at the front away from the large, crowded main room which was also very noisy. Our waiter seemed friendly and quite knowledgeable about the food and drinks but quite busy and a bit distracted. We ordered cocktails first which took about 15-20 minutes to arrive and the waiter didn't come back for around 15 minutes to take our food orders. The waiting staff use hand-held computers to take the orders.

We didn't do starters but the range isn't really very varied. It mainly consists of squid, rice balls and filled mushrooms as well as a cured meats platter. The portions are apparently quite small anyway and if I am paying £5 for a starter I want something really good!

The main menu is better. One of my friends sat next to me had “FLASH-GRILLED FEATHER STEAK” which was £13.35 to give you some idea of the prices! This came served with a salsa which personally would not be my ideal accompaniment to a steak! She did say it was delicious and ate it all before I could nab a bite! It was really tender and medium cooked apparently and she loved it.

The majority of the main menu is taken up with pasta style dishes ranging from spaghetti to linguine to risotto. I had the “CHICKEN LIVER TORTELLINI” and there were two prices next to this and all the other pasta dishes, in this case being £6.50/£10.95. The waiter explained the the cheaper prices is a very small version of the dish, in this case it would be 6 pieces of tortellini so of course I went for the standard portion! The menu stated that the dish was “Norfolk Black chicken livers flamed with Vin Santo, crispy pancetta and a silky sage sauce.” Well the food was delicious and very rich but I couldn't really taste anything but the chicken liver.

Vegetarians aren't too well catered for with the choice of mains being a risotto, a mushroom pasta and a salad. None of the mains come with sides, you can order chips, salad or vegetables in addition to your main. I chose 'POSH CHIPS' with Parmesan and truffle oil for an extra £3.25. They were nice enough but not amazingly different or special (nor very posh really) and I felt they were a trifle overpriced. There were also a selection of daily specials, most of which the waiter admitted had sold out so not sure why they were still on the specials board?

There is a good selection of wine, the cheapest being £16. The cocktails won't give you much change from £6 but were quite tasty but as I mentioned earlier took ages to be delivered and the service was quite slow.

Puddings were all under the £5 mark and were mainly ice-creams, sorbets and a tiramisu. I had the tiramisu and it was really rich and made with orange which was a change from the normal ones. It was a bit disconcerting to be asked as our plates were cleared away why we hadn't eaten all the food and was anything wrong. One of the group had a dish she really didn't like and didn't eat much of, she called it disgusting and as she is normally very un-fussy we knew it must be bad! I think that this must have been one of the specials as I can't see it on the menus. To be fair, the manager did come over and admitted that a lot of people didn't like the dish and they had lots of complaints-so why keep it on the menu? He took the price off the bill which was good service. We all agreed that the food was generally nice enough but not very special and a bit expensive for what it was.

I'm not sure if I would recommend Jamie's Italian or not really. It is expensive for an ordinary chain restaurant and I have enjoyed meals at other Italian chains like Pizza Express or Zizzi a lot more. I did feel like it's trying to be something it's not and should perhaps stick to more simple dishes. I should also mention that Jamie's is not very family friendly, there are no children's menus and it's very noisy and the tables are quite cramped.