Is Jamie Oliver’s steakhouse Australia bound?
Speculation is running high that Jamie Oliver's London steakhouse restaurant is headed Australia way.
Oliver has confirmed that there might just be something in it, although he isn’t giving too much away.
"Is there room for Barbecoa in Australia? Absolutely. When and where? I'm not sure yet," Oliver told Good Food in an interview.
Oliver is coming to Australia to inspect the Antipodean outpost of his restaurant empire in May having acquired the Jamie's Italian restaurants from the floundering Keystone Group.
His number one priority, he said, is "steadying the ship with me at the helm".
His time will largely be spent working with local teams with Jamie's Trattoria in Parramatta under the Jamie's Italian banner.
“Until the liquidation, the restaurants were incredibly well run and managed, and profitable, so it's healthy to consider relevant growth, right?" Oliver told Good Food.
"When Jamie's Italian came to Australia, it did exactly what it did in the UK, it disrupted mid-market dining," he said
"It was never designed to be the best meal of your life, it was designed to be an incredibly accessible, delicious experience, with the most amazing staff, celebrating really high-quality ingredients. The environment is changing, just like it is in the UK, so we're using this opportunity to evolve our offer, our menus, our service and we'll keep on doing that."
He talks about how some of the best staff and operations are "halfway around the world".
And the other item to watch out for is the possibility of him franchising, something he might have twigged on to after the Keystone experience.
"We're not big enough to do it everywhere we'd like to," he said. "What we hadn't foreseen in Australia is that our original partner would be bought out. But look, we're in a better place now because it's mine."
by Leon Gettler, March 28th 2017
