Yoyos, Numpties and Jamie Oliver 

Dear Jessica Brennan

Jamie Oliver has restaurants all over the world. His food is beautiful, fresh and an absolute delight to look at and eat. Unfortunately it takes more than great food to make a great restaurant. Let me explain.

It was a fantastic evening as we walked to Jamie’s Italian for a special dinner we were planning to celebrate our 25th anniversary.

We knew we could count on Jamie Oliver to deliver. Big fans, owner of many of his cookbooks and a previous visit to Jamie Oliver’s Union Jacks sealed the deal on our confidence that the food and service would be excellent.

When we arrived (we had a reservation) we were seated in the window next to the large Jamie Oliver sign which meant we could not see outside. My husband asked if we could move, and the waiter graciously said he would move us once someone else left. He made good on this promise and moved us to a lovely window seat.

This act of kindness set off an unexpected chain of events further complicated by the arrival of two families with small impish children. One was called Damien and the girls were named the Sisters of Darkness.

When the waiter moved us he didn’t, or to be fair, maybe couldn’t change the table number on the food/drink order we had placed, which resulted in the staff who deliver the food from the kitchen wandering aimlessly with glasses of wine and appetizers trying to find us.

“Over here! Over here!”

All the while we had the entertainment of a budding 9 year old yoyo champion and his 3 and 5 year old Highland fling companions, racing up and down the halls between servers’ legs, playing hide and seek with children found along the way from other parts of the restaurant and squealing, leaping and yes yoyo-ing nonstop between the tables.

Let me be clear that this was not 5pm. Our reservation was for 7:30 which doesn’t seem like family hour (and when we made it, the booking said they would need our table at 9:30, which I think is a bit cheeky given that they weren’t able to find our table or deliver food until 8:45 and had to remake our dinner – their decision not ours – because we were seated at the invisible table and no one knew where we were).

The dinner was delicious and the server did exactly the right thing by not giving us pasta that had been sitting sheepishly under the lights for 30 minutes stuck together by anxiety and embarrassment in a starchy sweat.

The children raced on, shrieking and tripping one server carrying food, and having near misses with the army of staff coming up the stairs and around the corner of a narrow hall to serve the bursting dining room. The parents of course were oblivious to this.

It’s not like I don’t like a good linguine that has been beaten to death by a yoyo, but apart from the annoyance that these parents were inflicting on the ten or twelve tables in their children’s wake, the racing around is without a doubt a health and safety infraction if nothing else.

The staff was more than aware of the chaos. Our server looked beleaguered like he had personally been beaten senseless with an al dente noodle. Yoyo boy was unnerving and had the ability to stand staring at you 4 inches away with the blank look of the twins in The Shining. I was afraid my cream sauce was going to turn if he kept it up.

As we were leaving we spoke to the manager and her co-worker about it. She giggled nervously and shrugged red-faced, and her co-worker tried to diffuse the situation with a patronizing, “Children have a lot of energy” and “We know, the last two days have been heaving with poorly behaved kids”.

Thanks.

He finally ended with, “There’s nothing we can do about it”.

In other words, Jamie Oliver’s Italian is willing to compromise their good name, the experience of their patrons and the safety of their staff for the sake of not offending one table of vacuous numpties who are now running the entire show.

Yes children do have a lot of energy, which is why a quiet, polite word with the parents would have solved the problem and kept a dozen tables from telling a dozen people each, never to darken the door of the place without ear plugs, a bicycle helmet and shin pads.

“Wait! Don’t go in there! Get takeaway!”

Let’s try to think of how it could have been handled.  Consider these options:

I’m sorry madam but health and safety rules require:

1. Your children to stay in their seats
2. Your children to stay with you at all times
3. Your children to keep their yoyos out of patron’s Bolognese
4. No Highland flinging within 100 meters of the open kitchen.

What if families with young children were seated downstairs away from the couples and grownups in order to not penalize the entire restaurant for bad parenting?

It was confusing to say the least. The menu, servers and initial vibe said “Grownup night out with fantastic food”. But the actual experience shouted “Where are the bouncy balls and face painting?”

What is this restaurant?

The last thing I said on my way out the door was to a five year old Riverdancing hopeful. I looked at her and said, “Stop running through the halls and go and sit next to your mother”. She looked up at me with the sweet face of a cherub, smiled and walked quietly down the hall, with no kicking legs or flailing arms, and sat down next to her mother who had the sound of wind whistling through her ears.

That was hard.

My advice? Think twice about Jamie’s Italian if you’re looking for an enjoyable night out. It’s obvious that the Kids Menu rules.

To paraphrase the great George R. R. Martin, “If you go to a restaurant based on the deserved, stellar reputation of the founder and find it full of screaming, misbehaving children and flaccid, simpering managers…a chef has no name”.

Love Mum xo