Jamie’s Italian – Italian restaurant

Jamie’s Italian is family-friendly restaurant chain co-founded by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, specialising in informal, Italian inspired rustic dishes.

As a break from the norm, I visited this restaurant during its breakfast service, when the menu focuses more on variations on traditional English breakfast options rather than Italian or continental breakfasts.

“The Full Monty”

Obviously, if you’re going to a restaurant for a cooked breakfast, you’re going to choose their version of the full English, right?  Jamie’s “Full Monty” breakfast consisted of two sausages, two rashers of smoked bacon, black pudding (always the sign of a good cooked breakfast!), eggs cooked to your preference (I went for poached), mushrooms, baked beans and roast tomato, with the less common additions of sautéed potatoes and “sticky” onions, and a side order of buttered toast.

"The Full Monty"

If you’re going to a “proper” restaurant for a cooked breakfast, you expect to get something a bit more memorable than you’d find in your local “greasy spoon” café … and in that respect, “The Full Monty” delivered in spades.

The free-range pork sausages were the kind of all-killer-no-filler sausages that are packed full of flavoursome meat rather than bulked out with breadcrumbs or similar, and they were browned perfectly on the outside but still moist on the inside.  Equally, the smoked bacon rashers were crispy without being overdone.

I’m a big fan of having black pudding as part of a cooked breakfast, and just like with the sausages, you could tell that this was clearly good quality black pudding from the taste and texture.  It was, unfortunately, a little overcooked for my liking (but that may have been because I appeared to have the end-slice in the sausage, so it was a little smaller/thinner than the other slices, and may have cooked more quickly).

The poached eggs were spot on, with neat, firm whites and runny, rich yolks, and the mushrooms weren’t too dry or too wet, which can sometimes be a problem.  Normally the fried or grilled tomato is my least favourite part of a cooked breakfast, but this “roast” tomato was still firm and juicy, rather than watery and soggy.

I’m also a firm believer that a complete cooked breakfast should include baked beans, and this came with a decent portion which kept me happy.  The large cubes of sautéed potatoes was an unusual touch, but it added a nice additional texture to the breakfast, and felt a more authentic element than, say, hash browns.  The serving of “sticky” onions (which were sliced onions which had been fried to the point that they’d effectively caramelised) was also something that I’d not seen before, and that worked well as a sort of additional condiment.

Even the toast was made from fresh bread baked on site, and it was crunchy and lightly toasted on the outside, but still soft and luxurious once you bit into it.  Presentationally, the breakfast embraced the restaurant’s rustic themes, coming served on a large, black cast-iron plate mounted on a wooden board.

“…a step up from the standard ‘fry up’, with fantastic customer service…”

All in all, this was a delicious cooked breakfast, and one which did genuinely feel like a step up from the standard “fry up”.  I also want to specifically mention how fantastic the customer service was, as not only was our waitress very attentive and helpful (as you might expect), but she and the kitchen staff also bent over backwards to accommodate our two children’s requested for breakfast options that were not on the menu.