High Street Style

A Jamie's ice cream van greets diners.
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In his customarily profuse fashion, Jamie Oliver has described the latest addition to his Jamie’s Italian portfolio of restaurants as “probably our most stunning site to date”.

The new restaurant opened in the Westfield London Shopping Centre at the end of last year, and was designed by Blacksheep, a UK-based design agency known for high-profile leisure projects such as Whisky Mist and Inamo.

Jamie’s Italian restaurants represent the celebrity chef’s first completely independent restaurant venture. Already present in 13 locations in the UK and due to debut in Dubai’s Festival City in the very near future, the brand aims to bring ‘what’s best about casual dining to the high street’.

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Oliver is famously enamoured with Italy and the country’s cuisine. “I should have been Italian. There is such diversity in lifestyles, cooking, traditions and dialects. This is why as a chef I find this country so exciting and what inspired me to create Jamie’s Italian,” he said.

In the new Westfield location, a decidedly Italian flavour is infused with Oliver’s distinct brand of Britishness. According to Tim Mutton, managing director of Blacksheep, the new restaurant is “a buzzy, stylish and warm environment, inspired by Italian food, retail and dining, combined with Jamie’s own cheeky Britishness”.

As the team was dealing with a well established and much-loved brand, part of the process was deciding what aspects of the design were generic and should be maintained, and what fresh creativity and site-specific features could be introduced, Mutton noted.

“We were very impressed with how open the client was to new ideas that expressed the fresh, honest and accessible feel of the brand,” he said.

“Every material choice and the story behind it was carefully considered as part of the design process and, in order to bring a truly authentic Italian feel to the designs, Blacksheep extensively researched not only the business, but also Italian restaurant and delicatessen culture,” he added.