Eating Tales

Last week we stopped in Bath for the day and stumbled upon Jamie’s Italian whilst exploring the town centre. We were really hungry but it wasn’t usual restaurant hours, around four o’clock. Anyhow, we  thought we’d try and see if they’d let us in. Conveniently it turned out they serve food all day!

The decor is a mixture of rustic/stainless steel with red plastic chairs. Very ‘Jamie’. We were welcomed by a pleasant waiter who was happy to make recommendations on the food, was well informed and seemed very enthusiastic about his job. The options on the menu ranged from breads and antipasti through to pasta, mains, sides and desserts. All very reasonably priced. What I really liked about this menu was that it was all different to your usual Italian restaurant. All the pasta is freshly made on site every morning and all the breads are baked in one of Jamie’s bakeries and delivered daily.

The kitchens were partly open plan and partly out the back. The open plan kitchen had all the fresh vegetables on display and cured meats hanging up. It almost resembled a market stall. The loaves of bread were on display at the side of the restaurant- again it looked like it was for sale. I enquired if it was available to buy to take home as the sourdough looked extremely tasty! To which I was informed that it’s really there for restaurant use but if diners particularly want to take away their bread they could buy at the restaurant rate. Which worked out at around £20 a loaf…..I politely declined!!

I had to try their home made pasta. I went for TURBO! PENNE ARRABIATA £5.95/£8.75  which is curly penne tossed in sweet tomato sauce spiced with chilli, garlic and parmesan with crunchy herby breadcrumbs, it was absolutely delicious. With that I also had GENNARO’S WINTER SALAD -radiccio, roasted pumkin, sweet red onions, sultanas and pine nuts £3.35 a combination of flavours I have never had before – radiccio is quite a bitter salad leaf thoguth it was extremely tastey. Mark went for LAMB CHOP LOLLIPOPS £13.95 -Grilled Welsh mountain lamb chops, cooked ‘al matone’ under a brick with a special minted sauce, chopped roasted nuts and soft herbs, delicious! He thought it was well cook, pink in the middle and a novel idea to dip the lamb into the three little bowls of nuts and herbs. The only down side is that the mint flavour could have been stronger to compliment the lamb. To accompany the lamb Mark ordered FUNKY CHIPSwith fresh garlic and parsly £2.75 . He was originally going to go for the posh truffle chips but was informed by the waitor that the flavour would be too strong to accompany the lamb. These funky chips were what Mark has been after everytime we go to a restaurant, but is usually dissapointed by soggy wet chips, they  were crispy and crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside.

Our overall experince of Jamie’s Italian was excellent. The menu was a refreshing change from the usual Pizza chains (infact no pizzas on the menu) the staff were helpful and worked well together and the food could not be faulted. The popularity of the restaurant meant that you felt you were eating extremely fresh food. (There was a queuing system outside for busy periods, which luckily we didn’t have to use). The only thing that I could critisize Jamie’s Italian for would be general cleanliness- the floor looked like it could do with a good sweep and unfortunately the toilets had an airfreshner that was pumping out such a strong smell that you felt like you had to hold your breath whilst you  were in there. It almost seemed like they were overcompensating for the lack of toilet cleaning.

If you are in the Bath area you should most certainly pay Jamie’s Italian a visit, you won’t be dissapointed. Brand ‘Jamie’ is certainly on the up.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 5:37 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.