Ted is gripped by Jamie

… now I know you always wanted to know this right ... if for some reason Jamie Olivier had decided that he hadn’t wanted to build an empire based on all things food, and to do good things socially at the same time, then he would easily have qualified to join the Police Force.  Oh how do you know that Ted?  Well ... anyone who has ever seen a Jamie cooking show will know that he squeezes lemons and limes with one hand and extracts all the juice.  I have calculated that in order to do this he needs a grip strength of at least 45kg (99lb) per hand, and that puts him well within the level required to join the Police.  I suspect that the Police need to have this level of strength to handcuff people as opposed to squeezing lemons and limes for their Gin & Tonic one handed … but who knows …

The Doll and I headed off to Jamie’s Italian in Piccadilly Circus with Sailor Jerry’s friends in tow. The approach here is like all things Jamie, good quality, fresh ingredients left to speak for themselves with minimal intervention and no unnecessary fussy fiddly stuff going on in the kitchen.  The waiter asked would we be sharing our antipasti orders and I replied “ah no”.  When the food arrived I decided that I had been too hasty, quickly reversed my original decision, and announced in a fit of generosity that of course we would be sharing after all.

The baked chestnut mushrooms on piano bread (thin crispy sheets of very moreish Sicilian bread) with smoked mozzarella was a standout with the right level of crispness from the bread, sweetly savoury mushrooms, all brought together by the creamy mozzarella. The Tuscan style chicken pate on crostini was equally good, and a must for any pate lover.  I decided that it was too hard to share my crab pasta after all and scoffed the lot myself, while reaching out for the pork scratchings, in no way to be greedy but just to have a textural contrast to the pasta you understand.

Our mains were equally satisfying, nice big clean fresh moreish flavours.  The chargrilled lamb chops were nicely pink and juicy, the duck confit skin crisped to just the right level. You can’t really go to an Italian restaurant and not eat tiramisu can you ... so we did!! 

Wandering around Piccadilly Circus and want to have a nice meal, then pop in to Jamie’s Italian.