Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

It’s no surprise that Jamie Oliver’s restaurant empire has collapsed

I am not surprised that Jamie Oliver’s restaurant empire has collapsed into administration. I reviewed his flagship restaurant on Piccadilly, Barbecoa, in 2017, and damned it because the food was bad and the atmosphere non existent. (Well, it was almost empty; you cannot create joy in a void).

I knew Oliver was in trouble before that when I ate – reluctantly, but not everyone is a food critic – at Jamie’s Italian in Victoria in late 2016.

It was, like Barbecoa, queasily large, the food was bad, and, again, it was almost empty. The punters may have been buying Oliver’s cookery books but they weren’t dining at his restaurants. Or if they did, they only went once, and there is no lower praise.

reviewed Jamie’s Italian in Soho for The Spectator in 2015, and found a lazy venture – a restaurant coasting on a television name. He would never have got away with it at the River Cafe, where he worked when he was young. Perhaps Oliver’s woes will teach famous chefs to be less greedy for money, and to think more of the punters who are paying for it all; for the £120 or so a family of four would spend at Jamie’s Italian, they could dine at home like kings – for a week. Here is my original review:

Jamie’s Italian is squeezed into the Devonshire Arms on Denman Street, Soho, borne on the duplicitous winds of TV shows and book deals. It’s an odd fit, like a Flump meeting Dante. The Devonshire was a pub at the end of the world, a Victorian dystopia made of violence and despair; it smelt of fighting and bad food. Now Jamie Oliver – an aghast teenager running to fat even as he declares war on the Turkey Twizzler and the civilisation that wrought it- has sucked it into his empire of Jamie’s Italians (there are forty-one, from Aberdeen to Gatwick), installed a roof terrace (empty) and written “Established 2014” over the door.

At first glance, Jamie has done nothing to the Devonshire Arms.

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