Jamie Oliver is a cheeky chappy from the UK who is well known in many parts of the world. From what I can gather, he runs about five different restaurant chains the biggest of which appears to be “Jamie’s Italian”.
He has something like 35 to 40 of these restaurants in the UK and a few others sprinkled around the world including in Ireland, Dubai, Singapore, Turkey and Russia. He may have already expanded into Sweden, Canada, Hong Kong and Brazil, but I just don’t know for sure.
It’s not important, what is important is that he has restaurants here in Australia…
He has Jamie’s Italian restaurants in Adelaide, Canberra, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane. Yesterday afternoon I found myself sitting in that Brisbane restaurant in a group of 12 celebrating a friend’s birthday.
We spent a very pleasant 3 1/2 hours or so eating, drinking and generally being merry in a very relaxed and rather cool feeling environment. I’m not going to critique the food, I wouldn’t know how to, but I do know I enjoyed my meal. What I can tell you though is that our bill came to $761 which worked out at about $65 per head.
Not bad considering we didn’t skimp on the beer or wine. Well, it was a birthday celebration.
Of course, knowing what our bill came to is of no use to anyone when you don’t know what we ordered. So let me present to you my cost comparison between our two countries…
Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant prices UK and Australia compared
Classier than the ‘Big Mac Index’ don’t you think?
For this experiment we are going to imagine that one person, the same person, is going to simultaneously order the same food (and eat it) in both the UK and Australia. I think it’s only fair that this person washes down their food with a beer and one bottle of wine as well, don’t you?
Are you imagining it?
Great, if you could now imagine that person asking for the bill in each country, we can move on.
The bill – UK
- Cured Meats Plank – £6.95
- Seasonal Vegetables Plank – £6.95
- Baked Mushrooms – £5.75
- Funky Chips – £4.00
- The Jamie’s Italian Burger – £10.95
- Prawn Linguine – £13.50
- Epic Brownie – £5.45
- The Cheapest White Wine (bottle) – £18.50
- Pint of Beer – £4.20
Total – £76.25
The bill – Australia
- Cured Meats Plank – $14.00
- Seasonal Vegetables Plank – $10.00
- Baked Mushrooms – $15.50
- Funky Chips – $6.90
- The Jamie’s Italian Burger – $19.50
- Prawn Linguine – $28.50
- Epic Brownie – $10.00
- The Cheapest White Wine (bottle) – $38.00
- Pint of Beer – $9.50
Total – $151.90
I do have to point out here that the menus in each of our countries were very different, but fortunately they did have some things that are exactly the same which is why I have made the selections I have. It’s only the wine in the above lists that are different, so I chose the cheapest white wine available from each menu.
Conclusion
In the UK this sizeable meal would have cost £76.25, at current exchange rates (one GBP equals 1.86 AUD) that’s equivalent to $141.82. So this restaurant experience would have cost around $10 more here in Australia than in the UK, or something like an extra 6.5%.
A narrow victory for the UK, but I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you that once you take into account the hard yakka, it becomes more appetising (and cheaper) to consume this meal here in Australia.
We had a wonderful day out, my only disappointment was that I didn’t see Jamie, but then again we went to Jimmy’s afterwards for a drink…
…I didn’t see him either. I also forgot to take a photograph of Jimmy’s, so my thanks to shebalso for the image.
