A branch of Jamie's Italian opened on Park Street in Bristol a while ago, but we've been avoiding going there because you can't book and there always seems to be a queue. But we thought that a rainy Sunday evening might be a good time to get in, so we took a big brolly and ventured out. We'd reckoned right and got a table straight away.
I'd been to the one in Bath a couple of times for lunch and really enjoyed it, so I was a bit disappointed as I looked through the menu and nothing jumped out. In fact, I really struggled to find anything I wanted to order at all. There was a lot of fish, of which I'm not a huge fan anyway and which I wasn't in the mood for tonight. Everything else seemed to involve chilli - in almost every dish, even including the vegetable side orders! I know Italians like a bit of punch to their food, but what's wrong with letting the natural flavours of the ingredients speak for themselves?
I started off with some crispy squid, which was nice - once I'd picked off the huge chunks of raw red chilli it was garnished with (and which wasn't mentioned on the menu - bit of a pet hate!). For my main, rather against my better judgement, I went for feather steak. The meat itself was pretty chewy and tasteless and it was only rescued by the sage garnish. It came with a tomato sauce which the waitress assured me was made of roasted tomatoes, but I'd be very surprised if the pile of sliced tomatoes I had were anything other than raw.
Tris had sausages and lentils which were much tastier, but would've been too peppery for my taste. As we chatted and tried to decide why we were unimpressed, we decided that perhaps had we popped in for lunch, it would've been fine - and we probably would've been been happy with different dishes - it just didn't quite cut it for a proper evening meal out.
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