Food: Jamie's Italian, Liverpool.

A couple of weeks ago, Simon and I were invited down for dinner at Jamie's Italian in Liverpool*. We arrived at the dimly lit, rustically decorated restaurant and were greeted by our waiter, James, who was great and a huge help throughout the entire evening- after he had sat us down at our candlelit table, he handed us our menus and talked us through the specials that were written on the chalkboards on the wall beside us. When ordering, we also asked him about portion sizes and whether it was worth ordering side dishes with our main meals and he was totally honest and never pushed us in to ordering unnecessary extras.
We decided to start the evening with a cocktail each whilst we perused the menu- I tend to try new things whenever I eat out for the sake of my blog posts, so I went for the Grey Goose Le Fizz whilst Simon played it safe with Jamie's Mojito, which I think was the better choice in the end (can never go wrong with a good mojito, although the Grey Goose was still nice and refreshing).

To start, Simon and I opted to mix and match few items from the Antipasti menu; Pork Scratchings, Crispy Squid (the winner of this round) and the Music Bread, which partially won us over with its cool name even though we had no idea what it was. It turned out to be a thin and crispy flatbread (similar to Indian poppadoms) topped with generous slices of pecorino Sardo cheese and a dot of chilli jam. As expected along with Jamie's infamous rustic style, our food was served to us on wooden boards, copper chalices and terracotta tapas dishes.

We both ordered pasta dishes for our mains, Simon choosing Jamie's Famous Prawn Linguine and myself the rather scary-looking Squid & Mussel Spaghetti Nero, which featured black squid ink pasta with whole, flash-fried squid, mussels and slices of tender octopus. Both were delicious, although I am partial to dishes containing large amounts of seafood. However, staying true to tradition on our food-related escapades, we carried out a smooth and swift swapping of plates half way through the meal to avoid any food envy (I don't think anyone saw).

Of course, there's always room for desserts and we both decided to satisfy our sweet tooth with chocolate in the form of a warm and rich "Epic" Brownie with vanilla ice cream and caramelised popcorn for Simon, and a Chocolate & Hazelnut Arctic Roll for me, which featured an espresso semifreddo amongst the mound of chocolate sponge, chocolate ice cream and chocolate shavings (is the word chocolate starting to look weird to you...?), which took the edge off its richness.

Overall, we had a very pleasant experience at Jamie's Italian Liverpool; each course was brought to us promptly and the staff were friendly and accommodating. Thank you to the team for inviting us along! :)

Have you ever eaten at Jamie's Italian?

Frances x

*DISCLOSURE: Jamie's Italian kindly provided partial payment for our meal in return for an honest review.