Jamie's Italian | Birmingham | Review
What better way is there to spend a bank holiday than a meal with friends? Nothing right? Good Friday saw us do just that as we took a little drive down a very rainy M6 to check out Jamie's Italian at the Bullring. It's somewhere that has been on my list to visit for quite some time and with a full day off from work and a long weekend ahead it seemed like the perfect way to kick off Easter.
Now, it's no secret to anyone that knows me, that where recipes are concerned, I usually turn to the foodie wisdom of a certain Mister Oliver. Whether it's his foolproof Risotto or that Mozzerella Al Forno that is a firm family favourite, his italian dishes are some of my favourites to cook so I was pretty excited to try some in a restaurant setting.
As none of us were drinking, we started things off with some homemade lemonades, the perfect little refresher and always better than the fizzy kind. I opted for strawberry, one of many options which ranged from classic lemon to pomegranate. Really fresh and definitely tasty enough to keep the gin and tonic cravings at bay!
I went for my usual bread board to start , with a seeded cracker bread, sea salt and Rosemary focaccia (which was particularly amazing!) ciabatta and some really good olive tapanade. I will probably never ever learn that bread boards are never a one person thing, but hey, nobody ever minds helping me out a bit! The others opted for the Italian nachos- deep fried, cheese filled ravioli with a salsa dip and the pork scratchings. Now to sway Dan away from ordinary nachos is a real feat but they went down very well so a big 10/10 for that one.
For main I went for chicken in a creamy mushroom sauce which was served on a crostini and topped with lemon dressed rocket. I also got some polenta chips with rosemary and parmesan, out of sheer curiosity. It was really lovely, quite light despite the creamy sauce and I especially enjoyed the polenta chips, which have well and truly altered my opinions of polenta! Dan went for his usual burger and triple fried Funky Chips with sea salt and rosemary which proved to be a big hit while Carrie and Chris went for a prawn linguini and the sausage pasta.
After not an awful lot of persuasion, we all decided to go the whole hog and take a peek at the dessert menu, it's rude not to, right?! Dan went for a brownie, which I must say looked incredible, Chris opted for the cheesecake, which looked enormous (we were assured by him that it was mostly cream though!) and myself and Carrie went for 3 scoops of ice cream. I would, without a doubt recommend the salted caramel, it's seriously good, I also went for chocolate and honeycomb which were good but not a patch on the caramel.
One thing I think we would all agree on is the fact that our waitress was amazing. She completely knew her stuff reeling off the specials and lists and lists of lemonade and ice cream flavours, despite us being completely rubbish and forgetting various flavours by the time she got around the table, she was super lovely and very patient!
All in all, we all had a really lovely evening, it's the perfect place for a post-shopping Italian lunch break or, like us, a meal with friends but I think one thing we all agreed on is the fact that although it was good, there was nothing about the food that was overly remarkable. It was all very nice but nothing that you couldn't find in another Italian chain like Strada or Ask which for somewhere headed by Jamie Oliver came as a bit of a surprise. Price wise, it was pretty reasonable working out to around £25 per person which for three courses, didn't seem too bad at all. All in all, I had a fab time with tasty food and lovely company and while its somewhere I would recommend to a friend in search of a decent Italian, it's not somewhere i'd rush back to immediately.
*This was a gifted opportunity in order to review, however, as always, all opinions are 100% honest and 100% my own.
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