Can Gino succeed where fellow star chef Jamie failed?
‘When you come in, you feel my presence,’ says Gino D’Acampo of his new Birmingham restaurant. SANJEETA BAINS meets the celebrity chef and samples the food
TV chef and cookbook author Gino D’Acampo’s much anticipated Birmingham restaurant has opened. The cheeky chappie is a household name thanks to his appearances on daytime shows This Morning and Let’s Do Lunch, plus Gordon, Gino and Fred’s Road Trip and Gino’s Italian Escape.
But the current hospitality climate is harsh and having your name above the door is simply not enough to maintain a restaurant.
Here in Birmingham, the short-lived Tom’s Kitchen, from Tom Aikens, closed at the Mailbox earlier this year and we all know what happened to Jamie’s Italian.
Gino, however, appears to be bucking the trend. He fronts a growing chain of Italian restaurants owned by Individual Restaurants group (which also runs Birmingham eateries Bank and Piccolino).
The 43-year old said: “Food should be simple, colourful and accessible to everybody. I don’t operate restaurants for the Michelin people. I operate the restaurant for my customers.
“Restaurants nowadays are definitely not all about the food. It is about the moment you enter the restaurant, the moment you use a toilet, the moment that you use the bar, the reception – it’s everything.
“And in my restaurant, we try to give it a soul. When you come in, you feel my presence.”
The comparison to Jamie Oliver’s restaurants, Jamie’s Italian, is obvious. But while Gino’s brand is thriving Jamie’s is no more. So what is the Gino brand doing differently?
He said: “The secret is I work for my restaurants. They get a lot of attention from me on menus, training the chefs, coming up with new ideas...
“I spend half of my life in Italy. So compared to the other Italian restaurants, whenever there is something new in Italy, I’m always the first one to bring it here.”
Judging by the number of shows Gino appears on he is clearly TV gold. But does his restaurant glitter as brightly. I booked a table at Gino D’ACampo: My Restaurant to find out...
On Temple Row, one door down from The Ivy, it’s a very pretty restaurant – light and airy with a super swanky bar.
The turquoise colour scheme could be quite calming if it wasn’t for the thumping loud music coming from the laptop of a DJ standing just around the corner from the entrance.
The restaurant area snakes around the bar so it is much bigger than it looks from outside but not as cathedral sized as Jamie’s old Bullring place.
The trip to the loos at this restaurant is a tour through the ‘Gino Hall of Fame’. The staircase walls are crammed with dozens of pictures of the TV star with his many celebrity friends.
Once downstairs, I’m greeted by a nightclubtype restroom area – there is a comfy sofa and chairs with a full length mirror. This definitely felt Gino: My Club territory.
Back upstairs my colleague commented several times the music was far too loud for his liking. But we were surrounded by much older diners who didn’t seem at all bothered.
Opening the menu feels like settling in to read a good book. It is massive. Firstly there is a lengthy preface from Gino introducing the choices and it includes a dedication to his dad.
It’s not really a menu – more like an autobiography presented as a menu. There are descriptions about the inspiration behind each dish and, rather handily, which Gino cookbook you can find them in and what page number.
The sections are confusing. The front page is devoted to Gino’s mains recommendations and then you find the starters and cicchetti dishes, before pasta, pizza mains and speciality grills and steaks.
And the sides are all on the back page so we didn’t see them until it was time for dessert.
The ‘Fantastico’ starter immediately sprang out from the menu – cured hams, pecorino, mozzarella,buffalo ricotta, artichokes, olives, sundried tomatoes and a selection of breads. It certainly sounded fantastico but at £23.25 expensive as a starter for two.
Instead, we opted for the tomato caper focaccia and a couple of antipasti dishes – arancini balls and calamari.
The focaccia was lovely – freshly made and flavoursome. The arancini balls were hearty but I thought bland. The calamari were crispy and tender. Both greatly benefited from their accompanying dips.
For mains, I went for classic carbonara – free range eggs, pancetta and pecorino cheese – which was pleasant enough. I fared much better than my colleague.
He had gone for ravioli with ham and ricotta, sundried tomatoes and spicy Calabrian sausage. The pasta was swimming in oil from the sausage. I took a bite and grimaced. It was super soggy with unappealing flavour contrasts.
My colleague was not as dismissive of his dish. He thought it should come with a health warning as the sausage was far too spicy but apart from that “it did the job”.
For dessert, we shared a Baileys Panna Cotta with caramel sauce and Hazlenut Cantuccini biscuit. It had the perfect wobble, tasting very rich and sweet and one bite was enough for me.
There is an extensive prosecco and cocktail list. I chose the house prosecco and was disappointed when it was served to me without any bubbles and just three quarters full.
The wine menu is very decent. I chose a hearty glass of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo which was reliably delicious.
As you’d expect from Gino’s gaffe, there is never any doubt this is an Italian restaurant – the accents are very, very strong.
The service was effusive and warm. Staff were happy to assist with dishes to recommend as well as wine pairings.
It was £91.30 for three starters, two mains, one dessert, one prosecco, two large glasses of wine, a Diet Coke and an espresso.
On the restaurant’s website, Gino states he “promises to serve real Italian food, as it should be, whilst keeping the offering affordable for guests”.
The food was nothing special. I’ve had better pasta at fellow chain Gusto, which is a more affordable experience. But whatever it says on the website and on the menus, this place is not about the food. It’s about evoking Gino’s personality – and it represents him perfectly.
As a way to spend a Friday evening the place is fun, silly and harmless – just like Gino. Fans will lap it up, if they don’t mind picking up the expensive bill afterwards.
But for a fabulous meal there are other Birmingham places where Italians do it better, such as Fumo up the road and Laghi’s in Edgbaston.