The other day, my mum and I went on a little girly shopping trip to the Bluewater shopping Centre in Kent. It's one of our favourite places to shop, and I have to say, I did quite a bit of damage even though I did not need one thing! So after a lot of shopping we turned to the restaurant end of the centre and tried to decide on where to stop for dinner. Usually when we come here, we stop at Ed's Diner, or something a little bit more unhealthy and fast foody. But on this occasion, we both wanted something a bit more light and healthy so I suggested Jamie's Italian. I had heard some great things about this place from friends and as we are both massive fans of Jamie himself, we thought we would give it a go. Obviously, so did everybody else, as we did have a 30 minute wait before we were seated. Luckily, there's a small bar on the side with some seating where you can order a drink while you wait, which is what we did.
The Atmosphere
I have to say, the atmosphere of this restaurant is amazing. I love the rustic decor of the entire thing, and all the small little touches Jamie has chosen to make this restaurant have really amazing atmosphere. Around the restaurant, there are television screens showing clips from Jamie's TV shows and other little cookery snippets. There is a massive chandelier in the middle of the restaurant which is quite impressive and if you look closely, which my mum and I did seeing as we were waiting for our table for quite a bit, you can see it's made of old china and cooking equipment which I thought was quite cool. The tables are all made of rustic wood and the whole thing is very Italian inspired, which I would obviously expect. The restaurant seemed very popular, all the tables were full and everyone looked as though they were enjoying the experience. I would definitely rate the atmosphere a 10 out of 10.
The Menu
I really liked the way the menu was set out. They had a nice selection of nibbles and starters that you could from and everything seemed very authentic to the Italian theme. We chose to have the 'Olives on Ice' to start with, which were absolutely delicious.
There is a pasta menu, which my mum and I were both interested in, however we did think it was a bit limited. We are both not very big meat eaters, so were after a vegetarian pasta dish. On the official menu on the Jamie's Italian website there are quite a few more seafood pasta dishes which sound delicious, so I think it was just the restaurant we went to that had a more limited menu. There was only really 3 vegetarian dishes to choose from and two of them included chilli, which again I am not really a big fan of. If you do fancy it, there is pizza, which we could see was being freshly made from our table. At the very bottom of the menu I did notice a fish of the day option which turned out to be salmon which I ended up choosing as I love salmon. However, it didn't come with any sort of carb so I did have to order a side of the fries. My mum chose the 'Baked Crespelle'. Lastly, everything was priced suprisingly well for how good the quality of the food was, mains ranging from £9.95 to £16.95.
This was my salmon dish and it was probably the best I have ever had. The salmon was cooked perfectly and it came with a whipped cream cheese and two different types of beetroot. Absolutely delicious. [£13.95]
These were literally the most delicious fries in the world. They were crispy, perfectly salted and infused with rosemary which made them a little bit different. I shared these my my mum, and she was just as obsessed as I was!! We almost had to order another one! [£3.85]
The 'Baked Crespelle' which was apparently, although on the very slightly watery side, very delicious. [£11.95]
Dessert
We did decide to take a look at the dessert menu, firstly because the main meals were not the most filling in the entire world, but also because some of them did look really delicious.
This was my 'Baked White Chocolate Cheesecake' which was absolutely delicious. It was very rich and rather massive so even with my mum helping me, I could not finish. Nevertheless, it was really one of the best cheesecakes I have tried. [£5.95]
My mum chose the salted caramel ice cream. The ice cream did actually come with your choice of two toppings, but she didn't fancy any of them. I was quite surprised at the presentation of the ice cream compared to the rest of the food that evening, it looked like something you would find on a school dinner menu, not at an Italian restaurant. Anyway, she said that it was subtly flavoured and delicious nonetheless. [4.95]
Overall
I would 100% recommend this restaurant to everybody. I would probably be eager to try out a different location to sample the bigger menu selection, but the food was of the best quality, the customer service was really good, and the atmosphere of the restaurant was great and you could really tell that Jamie played a huge part in creating and designing the restaurant to be exactly the way he wanted. Definitely check it out!
Seda x
