We went to Jamie’s Italian for my birthday. Having heard that the place gets busy very quickly, we decided to head there straight after work – in our case, we arrived at 5.15pm and was able to be seated straight away.

I like Jamie Oliver’s cooking style, and was curious about the food in his restaurant. If it was anything like his cooking shows, then it would be well-cooked, down-to-earth food.

We started with a few nibblies. The first was Italian-style nachos, which happened to be deep-fried raviolis with a smoky cheese filling, accompanied by an arrabiatta salsa. The salsa certainly made this starter, as it was otherwise chips and dip.

We also had arrancine – breaded and deep-fried balls of risotto, which was oozing with flavour, and topped with parmesan and served with a tomato sauce.

Bread and the arrancine might have come free when the restaurant first opened, but there were no freebies when we visited. Nevertheless, we did enjoy our entrees.