Jamie Oliver and his London Restaurant «Fifteen»
Jamie Oliver
On May 10 of 2010, Illya Kuznetsov, Sergey Shkitin and I visited London restaurant and trattoria «Fifteen». The restaurant’s founder is famous British chef Jamie Oliver. On that day, the restaurant started a month of Italian cuisine. We ordered Scottish langoustines with Florentine fennel, Chili pepper and olive oil, Sicilian fisherman’s broth featured by the restaurant «Fifteen» with seafood and bruschetta, and for dessert there was traditional Italian Panna Cotta with basil, syrup and sweet herbs and an oil cake.
As the chef’s surprise treat we were served with warm focaccia with olives and Italian herbs and Italian green olive oil Olio d′oliva l′extravergine, the aroma of which spread through the entire restaurant. Together with the ordered dishes, we were offered Italian white wine Pinot Grigio, which perfectly matched our seafood. As we were leaving the restaurant, we bought Jamie Oliver’s cooking books. On one of his culinary books under title «Jamie’s America», Jamie Oliver put his autograph.
James Trevor «Jamie» Oliver, MBE, born on the 27th of May of 1975 — is a British chef, TV host, author of famous books on culinary art, also known as The Naked Chef.
Stimulus is what matters in any work. For the eight-year old Jamie Oliver the first stimulus was an opportunity to make money for the coolest sneakers in the whole county, so on weekends he worked by the sweat of his brow in the kitchen of his father’s pub in the British village of Clavering, Essex County. While his classmates were kicking the ball, Jamie was peeling peas, then he peeled vegetables, then learned to handle a knife… The benefit was twofold – of course, he had the money to buy the sneakers, but he also understood early in his life what his heart was after. As he remembered later, he liked to treat his pals since he was a boy – especially to give them something to eat that they had never tasted before. So Oliver dropped out of school without finishing the last years (anyway, as he confessed, he did not score enough points) and set off to learn more appealing secrets of cooking art at the Westminster College of Public Food and then to France for the apprenticeship. He was unbelievably lucky with his appointment: at first he had the position of a pastry chef in the kitchen of Antonio Carluccio’s restaurant Neal Street, and then he ended up in the restaurant River Café under Rose Grey and Ruth Rogers. These two enthusiastic ladies grafted to him the respect for products and taught him to choose what was the freshest and the best. After that, he was noticed by people from TV who came to shoot a report about the River Café… – Jamie never gets tired of telling the following story again and again – about five producers who contacted him the next morning after the show was broadcast. During the years of his fantastic TV career he managed to star in many TV shows, write nine books of various volumes and become the idol of the whole democratic (and even not-so-democratic) part of the world’s gastronomic community.
Book with the Author's autograph
On June 24 of 2000, Oliver married fashion model Juliet “Jules” Norton, whom he met in 1993. At present, the couple has three daughters – Poppy Honey (born in March of 2002); Daisy Boo (born on April 11 of 2003); and Petal Blossom Rainbow (born on April 3 of 2009). The Olivers live in London, in Islington Precinct.
He opened charity restaurants «Fifteen» in London, Amsterdam, in Cornwall, and in Melbourne. In June of 2003, Jamie Oliver received Knights Order from Her Majesty Queen of Great Britain Elizabeth II.
The restaurant’s concept was simple and original at the same time – Oliver hired 15 “difficult” young people to train them in culinary art and make them worthy members of society. Not all of them finished the course. Millions watched them being trained on Channel 4 in the TV series «Jamie’s Kitchen.» At the same time, restaurant «Fifteen» was evaluated by 8000 readers of gastronomy magazine Square Meal Guide as “terrible,” “shocking,” “sarcastic,” and “rude,” and it was rated one of the six worst restaurants in London. Following this poor rating received in January of 2004, Jamie Oliver’s restaurant «Fifteen» was also acknowledged as the worst by Harden’s restaurant guide, receiving the lowest grade for the food, atmosphere and service.
The guide said that the restaurant was “dilettante” and Oliver was accused of “abusing his position” to make the prices as high as Gordon Ramsay’s.
But many celebrities stood up for the famous British chef Jamie Oliver. Thus, Hollywood actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston said, “We have been Jamie’s shows’ fans for a long time, and he cooks just delightfully.”
Supermodel Claudia Schiffer also came to Jamie’s help, saying that she visited the restaurant several months ago with Brad and Jennifer and she can boldly say that it was one of the three best dinners in her life, “The food, service and overall impression was astounding. I will be happy to recommend everybody to visit this restaurant.”
One of the leading gastronomists Heston Blumenthal also defended the restaurant “Fifteen,” saying, “I went to this restaurant a couple of months ago and had a wonderful dinner.”
At present, there are scores of seasons of various TV shows’ behind Jamie’s shoulders, some of them can be still seen on Russian TV channels, and ten published books (three of them are published in Russian) in the last of which, entitled Jamie at Home, the Naked Chef encourages everyone to do gardening and focuses on simple dishes, cooked of vegetables grown by ones’ own hands. The last achievement of Jamie Oliver has been the opening of restaurant Jamie’s Italian in Oxford, which has already received mixed reviews from critics.
To say it briefly, this man set an impossible task for himself: to teach the English to eat tasty food. We talk about the country concerning which the French say, “If the English have anything cold – it is their soup; if they have anything warm – it is their beer.” The tastelessness of British food is legendary. One of the wealthiest nations in the world, which plundered their colonies around the world, cannot learn to eat tastily even in the epoch, when British tourists invaded all the resorts. The reason is, as Jamie asserts, the English start eating tasteless food since they are young, and this takes place in schools. Oliver, who is a father of three children, leads an impressive campaign to have English schoolchildren eat healthy.
Just within few weeks more than quarter of a million of his countrymen voted on Jamie’s web site in favour of his proposal. And – what is absolutely unthinkable in Russia, but quite natural for Great Britain – the government listened to the public’s opinion. So, as they took heed to the people’s voice, the authorities decided to spend half a billion dollars to reform the school meal system. And this is not just about buying better quality goods for school kitchens; the kitchens proper will have to be refurnished according to the last word in equipment – not only in London, but in every county. Kitchen cooks will also be re-educated, while the school students together with their parents will be taught to have a fine taste in food. For this purpose, the Great Britain’s government establishes a special School Fund, which has to coordinate this huge effort. Hundreds and thousands of people have been set in motion; and the signal for this avalanche to rush down was given by a series of TV shows of famous chef Jamie Oliver and his following address speech to the nation: it is about time to do something, so that our children would stop to feed on junk food. The last statement sounds very Restoclubish.
Books published in Russian: J. Oliver. Happy Days with the Naked Chef. M.: Cookbooks, 2005; J. Oliver. My Italy. M.: Cookbooks, 2007; J. Oliver. Jamie’s Kitchen. M.: Cookbooks, 2007; J. Oliver. Jamie at Home. М.: Cookbooks, 2008; J. Oliver. Ministry of Food. М.: Cookbooks, 2010.
TV shows: 1999 — The Naked Chef — 6 episodes, 30 minutes long + special Christmas episode Christmas Comes Early; 2000 — Return of the Naked Chef — 9 episodes, 30 minutes long + special Christmas episode Christmas In New York; 2001 — Happy Days with the Naked Chef — 8 episodes, 30 minutes long + special Christmas episode Christmas Party; 2002 — Jamie’s Kitchen — 7 episodes, 60 minutes long; 2002 — Oliver’s Twist — 2 seasons of 26 episodes, 30 minutes long; 2005 — Jamie’s School Dinners — 4 episodes, 60 minutes long; 2005 — Jamie’s Great Italian Escape — 4 episodes, 30 minutes long; 2006 — Jamie’s Return to School Dinners; 2007 — Jamie’s Chef — 4 episodes, 60 minutes long; 2007 — Jamie At Home; 2007 — Jamie At Home Christmas Special — 1 episode, 60 minutes long; 2008 — Jamie’s Fowl Diners; 2008 — Jamie Cooks Christmas — 1 episode, 60 minutes long; 2009 — Jamie’s Ministry of Food; 2009 — Jamie Saves our Bacon; 2009 — Jamie’s America; 2010 — Jamie Oliver′s Food Revolution.
Official information: http://www.jamieoliver.com/, http://www.fifteen.net/Pages/default.aspx
Used materials: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki, http://www.restoclub.ru