Evening Favourites Menu at Jamie’s Italian

Jamie Oliver is known for his down to earth cooking style, but I was surprised to find he offers down to earth priced set menus when I was invited to his Covent Garden restaurant recently.  There are currently two set menus on offer, a two course lunch menu, at £10.95, and a three course evening menu that costs £18.95.

The restaurant style is rustic family Italian, which makes the atmosphere relaxed, if a bit loud.  My main issue was that the lighting was awful which made it really hard to take nice pics!  Our waiter was really friendly and quirky but didn’t seem to know much about even the basics of their menu, the cocktail list however, was surprisingly extensive and well priced.

There are four options for starters, we went for the Cured Meat Plank andTruffle Tagliatelle which we both enjoyed.  The meat plank had plenty of choice and could have almost provided a meal in itself, the mozzarella cheese and olives are great touches and my coleslaw hating boyfriend adored the version of it presented here as it was clearly made fresh, light on the mayo and full of flavour.

As for the tagliatelle, the truffle didn’t add much to the pasta but the sauce was delicious and the pasta was cooked well.

Onto the main and we both went for a steak.  There was a standard steak and fries on the menu but we opted to a pay a little extra for sirloin.  This isn’t the only thing you have to pay a little extra for on the set menu, if you want fries with the burger option for instance, you have to pay separately.  The chips and steak here were both cooked well, however I was disappointed with the quality of the steak, which lacked in flavour and was a little gristly.

Time for desert and both the Baked Chocolate Cheesecake and the Chocolate Pudding were delicious, but the Cheesecake is other worldly!  It was sweet without being sickly, something that is sometimes hard to achieve with white chocolate, and sill light and delicate, possibly my favourite part of the whole meal!

Overall, it defiantly wasn’t the best Italian meal I’ve had in London, but for less then £20 and given it’s location on the heart of London I think it’s a good choice if your heading to the theatre or sightseeing near by.

What do you think of Jamie’s Italian?