Long-time readers of the blog will already know of my love for all-things Jamie Oliver, including my first visit to his Italian restaurant in Manchester.
Luckily for me, my parents are well aware of this love, and so for my recent 30th birthday, they gave me a wad of vouchers to use at Jamie’s Italian. Hence the reason for my second visit in just over a year.
It was ridiculously busy for a Tuesday night in September, but we didn’t have to wait long for a table. I asked our waitress for help choosing a red wine and she was nice enough to bring me a sample of the house red and a slightly more expensive wine from the wine list. The Rosso house wine was definitely nicer for me and so I went with a glass of that.
To start, we ordered the Crab and Avocado Bruschetta, having loved the pea and broad bean one we’d had on our previous visit. Unfortunately, had we never eaten the pea and broad bean one, what arrived at our table might not have been a disappointment.
It was much smaller and served on a thin, crispy slice of sourdough bread, as opposed to the soft, doughy bread we had had the first time. That aside, the first thing I noticed, being an avocado fanatic, was that there was no avocado on the bread. There was a green dip on the side, which tasted like a pea puree, but no avocado. We called the waitress over who asked the kitchen and told us that the avocado portion of the meal was indeed the puree. Slightly misleading to put an ingredient in the title of a dish and serve a hint of it in a side dip. Having read the menu again since we left, I’m pretty sure they had just run out of avocado and lied about it, which really annoys me. (Can you tell this has happened to me before with avocado?) Besides that, the bruschetta was decent, but the flavour of the crab was mostly overpowered by the apple matchsticks which accompanied it.
Next up, I ordered the Mortadella and Ricotta Caramelle, while Scott ordered the Vongole Tagliolini, along with side dishes of the Funky Chips and the Spring Vegetable Vignole.
My pasta was creamy and comforting, with the apple offering a crisp and tart contrast to the cheesy sauce, although I found the toasted nuts to be a little too smoky and charred.
Scott’s vongole was wonderfully presented and the broth was buttery but not too heavy.
The funky chips were perfectly seasoned and garlicky and accompanied with a creamy aioli, while the spring vegetables, although fresh tasting and delicious, were very plain and boring in comparison (but then most healthy stuff usually is).
Despite all of that food, I do like that the portions are never overwhelming here, so that we both had enough room for dessert. I ordered the Epic Brownie, while Scott (the ice cream lover) went for three scoops of honeycomb, butterscotch and vanilla ice cream topped with crumbled honeycomb.
The brownie truly was epic; a good-sized portion and a gooey centre, topped with amaretto ice cream and caramelised amaretti popcorn. Both the ice cream and the popcorn had a wonderful hint of the liqour, which was a curious taste for popcorn but which actually worked really well. This dessert could have been the highlight of my meal (along with perhaps the garlic fries).
Scott’s ice creams were creamy and well-flavoured, while the homemade honeycomb on top was the right combination of crunchy and chewy.
Overall I loved my second experience at Jamie’s just as much as my first (which may have been helped by the presence of Prosseco cocktails and wine), but I do hold a slight grudge for the mis-selling of the crab and avocado bruschetta. Still wouldn’t stop me from going back, but would just encourage me to order a different antipasti.
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