To call Jamie Oliver busy goes comically beyond understatement. Look at his 2023: there is a new restaurant opening in Covent Garden this autumn, Jamie Oliver Catherine Street. There’s a new online course next month, as he becomes the first Brit to teach on YesChef, the worldwide series of cookery classes. On top of that is the sequel to his bestselling children’s book, Billy and the Giant Adventure, slated for spring, which was written as soon as his latest cookbook was put to bed (5 Ingredients Mediterranean, which dropped last week). Oh, and there’s his 50th birthday looming. For a man whose entire existence looked on the verge of collapse not so long ago, Oliver knows how to pick himself up, dust himself off, and carry on.
In fact, over a lunch at his Essex home of quiche and salad — Oliver, who’s been cooking all day for his new online classes, doesn’t make it himself — he is philosophical, contemplative and relaxed. He seems not to be worried, though he was once. In 2018 and 2019, his restaurant empire crumbled, with all but three restaurants closing: gone were his two Barbecoa steakhouses, gone was the Jamie’s Italian chain, and gone was passion project Fifteen, the not-for-profits that trained disadvantaged young chefs. And, for a reported 1,000 of his staff, gone were their jobs. The Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group went into administration with a reported debt of some £80 million, a move he said left him “devastated”.
