Jamie Oliver has said that some “posh” restaurant chains merely “assemble” plates of food and mislead customers into thinking that the meal that they’re eating is fully prepared on-site.
The celebrity TV chef, who shot to fame in his early twenties thanks to the launch of his BBC cooking show, The Naked Chef, saw his UK-wide high street restaurant chain Jamie’s Italian go into liquidation in 2019. Now, in a new interview with The Times, Oliver has reflected on what restaurant chains have to offer in 2023.
“If you look at some places [posh chains] — they’re assembling food,” Oliver told the publication. “There’s so much happening off-site and everyone thinks they’re getting a posh meal. It’s like, really? Come on.”
By contrast, Oliver says, his now-closed restaurant chain was “marinating, cooking, [and] making all our dressings on site.”
Oliver opened his first branch of Jamie’s Italian in 2008 and saw rapid expansion across the UK in the early 2010s. But that came crashing down when the debt of the business started piling up.
The Independent. To read the full story click here
