British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver announced that he will open a 200-seat branch of Jamie’s Italian chain in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay this July, six years after his first effort to open a restaurant in Hong Kong failed.
He told the SCMP that "it's going to be incredible". The new restaurant, set up with local parent Big Cat Group, will be on the second floor of a new building at Tang Lung Street.
According to William Lyon, chief executive of Big Cat Group and of Jamie’s Italian Asian branch, the prices of the Hong Kong restaurant would be matched against the average level of spending in Britain, HK$260 to HK$300 per person. “We don’t want to be seen as a fine-dining restaurant”, he continued.
He stated that the branch would observe strict standards in food sourcing. Ingredients from the mainland would not be used unless they met the restaurant’s strict standards and they could be traced with complete transparency. "We would apply the same standards as we do to the rest of the world, without compromising."
Oliver, who gained fame with his 1997 cooking show The Naked Chef, opened the first Jamie’s Italian in Oxford in 2008. He tried to venture abroad in 2009, but his plans for a Hong Kong branch fell through. In 2011, he opened the first outlet outside Britain in Dubai’s Festival City. In 2013, he opened Asia’s first branch in Singapore’s VivoCity, its largest shopping mall. Jamie’s Italian also has locations in Russia, Australia and Turkey.
[Image via Flickr]
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