Jamie Oliver Catherine Street opened in Covent Garden in December. Adam Bloodworth meets The Naked Chef’s London chef
Once famous for being the cheeky-but relatable cook who had spiky hair and said Essex-boyisms like “pukka” while he tossed veg around, the tide turned for Jamie Oliver in 2019 with the collapse of his restaurant empire.
You could make an argument that he fell out of favour with the British public even before that, for making tone deaf suggestions about people cutting out crisps and chocolate to cook more with fresh ingredients, which felt at odds with the public mood.
The latest target for critics has been The Naked Chef’s new restaurant opening, his first in five years. A run of bad reviews lampooned the place, suggesting the chef has become an easy target. Trip Advisor reviews are more positive.
“Let a restaurant find its feet,” says Chris Shaill, head chef at Jamie Oliver Catherine Street, in response to critics who visited the restaurant in the weeks after they opened over the busy Christmas period. Should they have waited longer to come in? “Yes… We’ve been improving since day one and we’re improving every single day.”
Catherine Street has now been open for two months, about the point in a new restaurant’s lifecycle when some critics argue reviewers should go in to eat. Leaving a grace period allows chefs and service staff time to perfect dishes as well as service after the inevitable challenges of the opening period.
Did Oliver and Shaill find the reviews hard to read? “Of course,” says Shaill, “but we take it with a pinch of salt. We knew what was gonna be coming. Lots of people have their own idea of how things should be. As a new opening we got some things wrong. I think it’s the way we deal with it: we’re very humble and we’ll take any criticism on board and we want to be better – but there are plenty of very good reviews.”
Jamie Oliver Catherine Street is the chef’s first foray into the London dining scene in almost half a decade. The restaurant interconnects with the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, operated by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Theatre Group. (The theatre mogul was instrumental in getting Oliver in in the first place.) Doors open to connect the vast lobby area of the Georgian performance space with a new ‘garden’ area where diners sit.
Trade in Covent Garden is fast and furious. Staff needed time to find their flow and rhythm
Ed Loftus, restaurant director at the Jamie Oliver Group
Shaill says that despite “a really solid training programme” that began three weeks before the restaurant launched, opening weeks before Christmas in the busiest period of the year was always going to be difficult. “It’s been an opening, that’s for sure,” he said. “We knew it was going to be a challenge. I knew there was a lot of pressure in this opening – we definitely felt it, but we’ve done really well. It was great seeing the team evolve and grow and just get through that busy Christmas period.”
Ed Loftus, restaurant director at the Jamie Oliver Group, explained how the footfall at the restaurant presents a unique challenge: “Being in Theatreland, trade is fast and furious. Things are maybe not intuitive to start with, so the team needed time to find their flow and rhythm. That’s been the main learning, seeing how people use the space and making minor adjustments.”
Shaill says it is only now that the restaurant feels ready to experiment with the menu, launching the first daily specials: “We first wanted to focus on the core menu, let the chefs and the team become familiar before we went to the next step. We had everything ready to go, it was just a matter of timing, otherwise you end up overloading a new team.”
While Oliver’s company is broadly in profit, the restaurant industry is in a precarious position. The collective debt owed by the UK’s top restaurant groups now surpasses £3bn for the first time, new research by UHY Hacker Young shows. Stats show a slowdown in consumer spending and increased operating costs, both tied to the heightened costs of living.
Oliver calls the restaurant an homage to the elevated pub food his father Trevor served at his country pub in Essex, The Cricketers, where Jamie grew up. It was there, in the midst of the countryside, that Oliver, now 48, learned the basics of the cooking that made him one of the most recognisable chefs of his generation.
His group made over £6 million net profit in the last twelve months, and there are over 70 restaurants worldwide with Oliver’s name above the door. In 2024 the team are “focused” on US openings first for the first time “in some shape or form,” says Loftus, who insists no more Oliver restaurants will open in the UK. He laughs off the suggestion of a five-year plan for more Oliver openings on home turf.
“For Jamie having a [UK] restaurant is a really significant part of his identity,” says Poulter. “We want this to be here in 20 years.”
You can visit Jamie Oliver Catherine Street at 6 Catherine St, London WC2B 5JY, book online
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