After four years out of the UK restaurant game, Jamie Oliver is staging a triumphant comeback and will open a new venture in Covent Garden in November.
Jamie Oliver Catherine Street will be an “independent, produce-focused restaurant,” the Standard can reveal, in a Grade I-listed building seating 130 inside and a further 30 on the terrace.
Oliver has named Chris Shail, who worked alongside the broadcaster and author for eight years, as head chef, while Emma Jackson, formerly of Soho Farmhouse and Petersham Nurseries, is to lead on pastry.
The celebrity will work with both to create a menu that reflects Britain’s “rich and diverse food culture,” press material said, championing its independent suppliers.
An “accessible” menu will include past favourites of Oliver’s, as well as new ones created for the restaurant. The food, we’re told, will be more in homage to the pub classics — he is the son of Essex publicans — he grew up cooking, rather than the Italian dishes that helped make his name.
Oliver said: “I’m extraordinarily excited to be opening Jamie Oliver Catherine Street in the heart of Covent Garden, and stepping back into the UK restaurant industry that I love so dearly. It feels like an opportunity to celebrate where I’ve come from, and I’ll be sharing dishes inspired by the food that’s shaped me, dishes that I grew up cooking on the line.
“My hope is that Jamie Oliver Catherine Street will be a wonderfully welcoming, happy place to dine, with great service, and delicious food at its heart.
“We’ll be going big on daily specials and have a robust menu that offers something for everyone. It definitely feels like a pivotal moment in my career, and some of the very best of my restaurant teams over the years have come back to join me on this next part of the journey.
“To say I’m excited is an understatement.”
Suppliers are to include Flourish Produce, Westcombe Dairy, Cobble Lane Cured, and Hill Street Chocolate, as well as Wild Card Brewery, an award-winning outfit based in Walthamstow.
Leading the front of house team, meanwhile, will be Caesar Cruz, who spent 16 years working with Oliver when his past empire was in full swing.
It was in 2019 that Oliver’s chain of Jamie’s Italian restaurants closed following financial difficulties. The TV star, whose cookbook sales are well into the millions, had almost 50 sites before the closures, including Fifteen, two higher-end restaurants in Cornwall and London respectively.
News of his return to the UK restaurant market broke in May this year, with an announcement of a new project adjacent to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
Last month, Oliver told the News Agents podcast that losing his restaurants had been “utterly painful.”
He said: "Having thought about it long and hard, I had the best of the best. I probably had the best mid-market, socially-orientated business on the planet for seven, eight years and lost it over four years, which is utterly painful and it was something I’d never, ever, ever like to do again.
"We probably signed rents of 20 per cent over the odds, our rates went up 40 per cent over two years, high street decline was 16 per cent.
"Then our margins, which were smaller because we were selling more ethical food at the same price as someone next door that you probably frequent that wasn’t, so our model didn’t work and we died."
