Jacuzzi, 94 Kensington High Street, London W8 4SJ (bigmammagroup.com). Starters £9-£28, large dishes £15.50-£45, desserts £8-£14, wines from £29
The word “Jacuzzi” conjures up opposing images. On the one hand there’s the Jacuzzi as warm, soothing bath; the place to ease away the stresses of the day in a flourish of bubbles and fizz. On the other, there’s Jacuzzi as festering breeding ground for every suppurating pathogen known to modern medicine, and a few that are not. Because I am cold and dead inside, I expected the restaurant Jacuzzi, on London’s Kensington High Street, to be the hospitality industry’s version of the latter. It turns out to be very much the former.
It’s a huge, riotous explosion of high camp, thick foliage, artfully poised clutter, pasta and whipped ricotta. It is three floors of raucous, jaw-slackening bravado from a restaurant operator that has found a way to hard-bake the words “generosity of spirit” into their offering. You’ll pay for that generosity. Prepare to mutter about “that London”. But you’ll leave feeling you got your money’s worth. Some of the food is over-wrought, in a Ready Steady Cook sort of way, but it’s done with such enthusiasm, with such a profound more-is-definitely-more sensibility that it’s hard to linger over the missteps. I had a lovely time.
Jacuzzi is the fourth London opening from the Paris-based Big Mamma group, famed for their comic-book take on the Italian restaurant, albeit one built around a loudly proclaimed interest in top ingredients. They love clutter and velvet plush, lights and rubber plants. An awful lot of rubber plants. It’s like eating in an excitable bride’s wedding bouquet. In 2019, after mounting a floral assault on the French capital, they opened Gloria, their first in London. At first you could not book, so long, uncomplaining queues built up outside the Spitalfields site. It’s cheaper than advertising. Obviously, I rolled my eyes at the mere thought of standing in line. Me? Queue? How very dare you. I refused to do so again when they opened other outposts in the West End.
In January came Jacuzzi, which allowed bookings from the start. I waited a couple of months and aimed unambitiously at a Monday night. Lo, I was in. Remarkable, given it only seats 170. The second floor has a retractable glass roof for summer months. The next level up has framed items of swimwear. The glasses are embossed with images of naked ladies feeding each other grapes and, for gender balance, the tiles in the loo show naked chaps wrestling. At least, I think they’re wrestling.
Drill down on the food and it’s pretty straightforward: a lot of burrata because the Kensington crowd do love cheese still in its foetal stage. There are a few pasta and pizza dishes, a couple of salads and a brace of steaks. But that really doesn’t tell you anything. I imagine every menu-tasting session in this company begins with everybody staring at how the dish looks. And if they don’t involuntarily bark “WOW!”, leap up and hug each other, it doesn’t make the cut. The pasta dish for which they have become famous is a large serving for two of truffled spaghetti, mixed tableside, within the well of a round of cheese. It costs £23 per person. Some of that is for the floor show. Some of it is for the florists.
My companion didn’t do cheese and I didn’t quite lack enough shame to order it for one. So instead, here comes a spiral of wide, silky, pasta ribbon pouches, filled with creamy polenta, the carbohydrate-heavy, denim-on-denim of the food world. It stands proud of a very good lamb ragu, which has clearly been cooking for hours, the plate topped with dribbles of salsa verde, fresh red chilli and the offer of freshly grated parmesan. There’s a comedy to its heft, and to the visuals. I can’t pretend. I would have been happy with simple ribbons of that pasta with that ragu, but going to a Big Mamma restaurant in search of simplicity is like going to a brothel hoping to find someone to hold your hand.
By the same token, I love a straightforward vitello tonnato, that classic dish of thinly sliced room-temperature veal with a tuna mayo. But I did enjoy their version, served as a starter: spherical croquettes of braised and shredded veal, dolloped with a ripe tonnato sauce and capped with a caper. If this were a cocktail party canapé you’d loiter by the kitchen door, hoping to snaffle them as they come out. A starter of red prawn ceviche chopped up and served with a little caviar and a buffalo milk and seafood sauce tasted great, looked delightful, but lacked texture. And then there was a main course of deep-fried globe artichokes, a Jewish speciality from Rome. The brilliant green pea purée underneath was sweet and nutty. The stupidly generous trio of artichokes did their job, though they did make me pine a little for the original version eaten by itself, straight from the deep fat fryer. But again, this is to miss the point. It’s a creative non-meat dish. It’s diverting to look at. And there’s a lot of it. Let’s hear it, too, for the hot focaccia filled with garlic and ricotta. It’s a Pizza Hut side dish that has had elocution lessons.
Leave room for dessert. Maybe just come here for dessert. Bring an appetite. Bring extra friends. A £12 choux pastry bun is the price-justifying size of a galia melon. It is filled with very good pistachio ice-cream. Then they pour hot chocolate sauce over it. For God’s sake, get out your phone. If chocolate sauce is poured over your dessert tableside and nobody is there to video it how do we know it happened? Or get a slab of their thickly stacked apple tart, with a dollop of whipped lemon ricotta cream on the side. Sod it, get both.
Service is properly engaged and appears to be that rare thing, genuinely happy. The wines are entirely Italian. The cocktails look a bit silly. But again, that’s part of the deal. I expected to tolerate Jacuzzi; instead, I gave myself to it as to, well, a hot, bubbly bath. It pains me then to point out the stupidity of the Sunday app which, via a QR code, enables you to pay for dinner from your phone. Except you’ll be charged a few extra quid for the privilege of not getting someone to bring you a bill and the card machine. We did it the old-fashioned way instead. Then, overfed and almost overwhelmed, trotted down those honey-glowing stairs and back out into the real world.
News bites
Sad news from Cardiff where the closure of the bistro Bully’s has been announced after over 25 years of trading. Owner Russell Bullimore said on social media that he had made the decision with “a heavy heart” but had no choice because of “rising costs of produce and utilities”. In 2014 Bully’s was the AA’s restaurant of the year in Wales.
Elsewhere in the Welsh capital a new Parisian-style bistro has just opened, inside the city’s Castle Arcade. Maison de Boeuf offers a very short menu, which sticks resolutely to the classics. For starters there is a choice of a cheese soufflé, French onion soup and snails, and for mains it is steak and chips, or a plant-based version of the same. For dessert there is a crème brûlée, tarte tatin, profiteroles or a Paris-Brest (maisondeboeuf.com).
Jamie Oliver has announced a return to the London hospitality business with a new restaurant inside London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It has been described as upmarket of the Jamie’s Italian chain which collapsed in 2019, leaving several suppliers out of pocket. After that business failure Oliver continued growing his restaurant empire globally, and it now has over 70 outposts worldwide.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
