I love Jamie Oliver. There is just something so inspiring about him and his cookbooks. Granted half the ingredients are somewhat hard to find here, but watching him make his dishes on his shows is like watching a magician. Amazing. The food always look so hearty, warm, rustic and just full of goodness. So naturally, I'm unable to replicate his 30 minutes meals within 30 minutes (it's the prep time that kills you - the prep time is obviously not catered in that 30 minutes!) and me being a fan, I was super excited to hear Jamie Oliver was opening his chain of hearty, quick, rustic Italian dishes in Perth last year.
Jamie's Italian is located at the 140 William street/shopping complex in the heart of the city.
It is on the corner of Murray street Mall and William street.
Finally it opened on the long weekend that was Easter (this year) and lucky for me I found a friend who was willing to line up with me on Easter Monday (we got there 10 minutes after we arrived and still managed to wait 45 minutes - 15 minutes in line outside and 30 minutes inside) - not bad, better than the 2 hour waiting times expected for dinner. Since then I have been twice (three times in total.. still not as many as a friend of mine). One was for dinner - a group of 6 - expertly booked by me, myself and I online, after a good 30 minutes of trying out all different times and date combo to land myself a booking (landed on a Tuesday night at 8pm) and one at afternoon tea time (wait was 30 minutes at 3pm on a Saturday)!
So most of Perth has already been there, but for those that don't know Jamie's Italian is predominantly a walk in restaurant, there are LIMITED places for bookings. Saturday and Friday nights are all booked out until January 2014 (this was last confirmed two weeks ago by my mother, who tried to book last minute). You can try your luck at booking on this site right
here. So take your chance and walk there - you will always be welcomed, don't book, it's really not worth the effort (or maybe it is?) and then just expect to wait... at least 2 hours for dinner... still.. or so I've been told.
Lining up isn't so bad when you have planks of goodies like polenta chips and olives and slices of meat served to you.
The restaurant is big, but it doesn't have as much seats as I thought it was going to have. But I love all the exposed ceiling, the massive crystal chandelier in the middle and I love how the restaurant is divided into different sections - pasta making corner, bar, hot food kitchen (that you can see and also see how the orders are progressing!), the salad/cold food/planks/dessert corner - it adds to that atmosphere of "busy bee" to an already very busy place! And I just love seeing meals prepared!
Pasta station
Jamie's Bar
Hot food kitchen - where all the action's at!
Cold/salad/planks/desserts corner
The massive beautiful chandelier takes stage in the middle of all the action and gives the rather industrious looking restaurant a bit of bling.
So what have I gotten so far on my adventures at Jamie's Italian? Well.. let me tell you! I've tried almost all the pastas minus the ones with squid/octopus/cuttlefish due to my allergy - major bummer because one of the ones I want to try sounds delicious but has squid in it.
There are TWO advice that I will give you..
1) GET THE SEAFOOD PLANK!
2) SHARE. The entree sized pastas are generous - you can turn that easily into a main course if you get the seafood plank beforehand. It also means that you can share with people - get a few different entree sized plates between 2-3 people and you get to taste test more than just one dish.
Oh .. ok wait there is really 4 advice notes..
3) Don't forget to look at the special boards - one is located near the hot food kitchen and the other is near the cold food kitchen. They have the specials for the day/week. And if you get a bad waiter they tend to forget to tell you about those.
4) Get a cocktail/wine it's nice and the cocktails are made well. For those who are designated drivers the mocktails are pretty good too. I've tried all three choices of beverages (oh sparkling water too! - but I always prefer tap water..)
A bottle of beautiful Italian red wine from where Well's family are from
Can you guess what this is? Yum.
So for entree or as an antipasto dish, there are plenty of choices.
There is your usual suspects of aracini balls (vegetarian style). Its not cheesy enough for my liking and for a change there was not enough salt! (which is saying a lot coming from me!!) and I wouldn't recommend it, as there are a lot better choices on that list.
Arancini ball
And of course crispy squid. According to bf it was nicely cooked and salted well with garlic goodness.
There is also the baked mushroom. Beautiful field mushrooms baked with smoked buffalo mozzarella cheese and with crunchy pita-bread like chips. It was delicious, cheesy, crunchy rustic goodness.
Baked mushrooms
There is also the option of the planks. I've only ever had the meat plank and the fish plank so I can only comment on that, but for those that are vegetarian, there is a vegetable plank. The planks are charged per person and the serving size is according to that.
The meat plank consisted of cured meats (prosciutto, wagyu bresaola, finocchio and capocollo) beautiful cuts of meat, cheese (buffalo mozzarella, pecorino with chili jam), olives and pickled chili and caper cherries along with a salad of shaved root vegetables (carrot, beetroot and possibly onion). The cured meats were of great quality and delicious, but the meat plank is very "normal". It's just your charcuterie board (but in an awesome plank form with quality produce) and HALF THE PRICE of other places.
Meat Plank
The fish plank on the other hand - AMAZING (**note it may be bias as I love quality seafood to the max!). It has the salad of shaved root vegetables, olives, pickled chili and caper cherries, along with the highlights, beetroot cured salmon on a bed of ice, shellfish - mussels and clams in a white wine and chili broth, mini fritto misto with yuzu mayo and the best thing ever (I could spread it like butter!) smoked mackerel pate! I've tried the fish plank twice and it's just an amazing concept with quality, fresh seafood with this amazing mackerel pate that I really want to buy... I wonder if they sell it.. If so please get me a jar or two or three!
So with the antipasto out of the way it was time to choose the mains. Taking my own advice on board I've had the opportunity to share many a pasta dishes with friends.
My top three pastas (that I have tried..) will have to be:
** Blue Crab Swimmer Risotto
** Rabbit Tagliolini
** Wild Mushroom ravioli
I have however been told but numerous people that the Seafood Bucatini is delicious (I can't have it because of the squid so **blows raspberries** at you all!)
The blue crab swimmer risotto is amazing. There is generous amount of crab meat and the broth has so much crab infused in it you can smell and taste it. Sprinkle and mix the crunchy goodness on the spoon and the flavours of the chili, crab and the creamy risotto is just yum.
Blue swimmer crab risotto
I also had the opportunity to try the wild truffle risotto. WOW was there hits of truffle through that. The earthy truffle taste (black truffle is thinly sliced through it and lots of truffle oil is also used) and smells hits you. It's pretty intense. It's creamy too. It's delicious. But with nothing but the acquerello rice, the dish can be plain (even with all that truffle intense flavours through it..) it needed something else. So I ate it with the baked mushroom that I had for the antipasto with it and it made it so damn good. Chefs at Jamie's Italian would you consider adding mushrooms to this dish??
Wild Truffle Risotto
The Black Ink Spaghetti
The blank ink spaghetti is something I'm not allowed to have due to my strange allergy to squid/cuttlefish/octopus etc. Instead I decided to risk it anyway and pick at the broth and the scallops that's part of the dish. May I add, it has beautiful and very slight chili kick to it. Then after I had this a few hours later I was paying the price for eating squid ink-fied broth. Anyway, one to try.
The prawn linguine was this chili tomatoey generous servings of prawn dish. It's lighter than most prawn linguine dishes which is nice. But, it is exactly that (the fact that you can get prawn linguine dishes elsewhere) what makes me stir away from this one. Granted the pasta is 1000x better at Jamie's Italian than other places that also serves prawn linguine. This is agreed by my very traditional pasta-making Italian friend. (I didn't get a picture for this because for some reason my lens wouldn't focus properly on it..)
The wild rabbit tagliolini is one of the ones I recommend because it came out as something we didn't expect. There was plenty of shredded rabbit mixed through the pasta. The pasta wasn't creamy at all like we thought. In fact it was light, it was slightly tangy and it was just the perfect dish you can have without feeling icky about it. I mean the sauce has mascarpone and it's not this crazy creamy dish! It was just a pleasure to eat.
The mushroom ravioli - what can I say.. each packet of ravioli was filled with wild mushrooms, ricotta and garlic and was served in this rich mushroom tomato sauce. It was just mushroom heaven. Warm, rustic, a true reflection of what Jamie Oliver would have cooked on one of his shows.
Apart from the pastas I tried a pork belly special. It was slow cooked pork belly with sweet balsamic vinegar with roasted potatoes and pumpkin. The pork was rather fatty one that was served on our plate. The sweet balsamic vinegar, made the succulent pork sweet and caramelised the top. It was enjoyable to eat. A winter's dish heaven. Warm, rustic, Jamie O all the way. Teamed with a side of pumpkin and pine nuts it was just what was needed on a cold day/night.
Slow cooked pork belly with roasted pumpkin and potatoes
Side dish of roasted pumpkin and pine nuts
Well's bf had the fish in a bag with fish of the day, clams, mussels, fennel, chilli and anchovies. It looked amazing. He said it was beautifully cooked fish (I've forgotten which fish) and was very filling. He regretted ordering his side of polenta chips. Ps. I love the way it was presented.
A meal is hardly complete without dessert.
There was the ice cream topped with the sauce of your choice and toppings of your choice. Bf thought it was going to be vanilla ice cream (no idea what the ice cream were going to be because no waitstaff told us and nor was it written anywhere on the menu) and got honeycomb with butterscotch sauce on top. When it arrived he saw one ice cream possibly having nuts so question it and of course it had (again no idea what it was because again we weren't told properly what it was). He got replacement ice cream (minus the nutty one) but the toppings they decided to change from what he wanted, even though he told them the toppings are to be the same. Epic fail. Needlesstosay bf didn't enjoy his dessert much.
Bf's original ice cream dessert looking amazing lucky he noticed the green nutty flavoured ice cream.
We weren't even told what ice creams were available.
Nor was there a disclaimer about nuts.
He got replacement ice cream, but with major attitude from the waitstaff. Plus it didn't look as appetizing as this.
Wells and I on the other hand shared the tutti frutti meringue pie and coffee-flavoured trifle tiramisu. I rather enjoyed both of them. The tiramisu didn't have much coffee-flavour through it but the orange was certainly there and it was a rather pleasant and homely dessert. The meringue pie wasn't too sweet and had the nice kick of tang and was so soft and lovely.
Coffee-flavoured trifle tiramisu
Tutti frutti meringue pie
looking at the desserts makes me hungry!
Oh You can also request for bread. They give a selection of different breads with quality olive oil and slightly sweet balsamic vinegar to dip. Or you can use to bread to spread the pate that you will get when you get the fish plank.
Jamie's Italian is a pleasure to dine it, simply because it uses quality produce to make quality dishes (and it comes out fast!) and amazingly cheap and affordable prices. Showing to the people of Perth that you don't need to pay too much to get good food.
The downside is that the waitstaff that serve you is a hit or miss. There was a waitstaff that ACCUSED my bf for choosing a dessert with nuts in it when NO ONE told him that there were nuts in any of the ice cream, in fact he was not told what kind of ice cream he was going to get, he was lucky he noticed. Rude and downright dangerous. Granted he should have checked, BUT when he forgot and was told there was nuts he didn't need to be accused of choosing a nut dessert (oh like he did it on purpose!). But I have had nice ones that served us as well. But they tend to be forgotten by the rude ones (and I've had my fair share of that at Jamie's). I guess you can't bring good service to Perth. Pity.
The other downside is the wait time. But there are rumours floating about that there may be a second Perth restaurant. Here's to hoping? OH they also have extremely cute toilets.
