Jamie’s Italian on Park Street is easily the most eagerly-anticipated restaurant to open in Bristol for many years. There has been a buzz about the place for months, and today it finally officially opens its doors. Although there’s a reason why this review is appearing now, for in actual fact the restaurant opened yesterday. Why remain closed when everything is ready to go?

Occupying a prime corner site in what used to be Blackwell’s bookshop, Jamie’s Italian Bristol is huge. It’s spread over three floors that can seat 300 people at any one time, with the expected queues heading out the door and up Berkeley Avenue towards Brandon Hill rather than clogging up Park Street. A television on the side of the building will entertain some of the people in the queue, perhaps with shots of the busy kitchen, and our waiter last night told us that people will be served nibbles while they wait.

There is a strict no-booking policy here, so that’s why there have been queues in every Jamie’s Italian to open so far. The Bristol branch, with bare stone walls, artfully-chipped tiles and metal staircases, is the 17th in the UK, with international outposts in Sydney and Dubai.

The Bristol branch is also the biggest Jamie’s Italian yet, and run by a veritable Oliver’s army of exactly 100 staff members, trained to be as knowledgeable and passionate about the food as Oliver himself. Our waiter had already tried most of the dishes on the menu and could answer almost all our questions except how they make the bolagnese sauce: that’s a closely-guarded secret.

After the Willy Wonka-esque secrecy, it was a shame that my spaghetti bolagnese was not all that impressive. The menu called it an “old school classic”, but it wasn’t classic at all, but a bit limp, dry and insipid. Not great.

This was the only blip in the meal, however, from which we chose from a long list of dishes with a few touches of Oliver’s cheeky chappy personality to entice us even more: world’s best olives on ice, amazing chilli jam, beautiful bucatini carbonara, lovely buffalo ricotta ravioli, funky chips, awesome chocolate and espresso tart.

We were sat in the middle floor of the restaurant with a view into the large kitchen. Downstairs is a beautifully-presented antipasti counter (left), while the fish is kept next to the first-floor kitchen, underneath a painted sign which says ‘Foreign Department’, a nice reminder of this building’s former use. It’s funny to think that generations of students would have been browsing rows of books where now chefs work feverishly.

My flatmate Jack and I started with a selection of eight different breads, ranging from a bread stick hand-rolled in Tuscany to bruschetta made that morning on the premises. My other flatmate Cass was content to stick with the olives, served on ice and with a small bowel of tapernade and music bread, wafer-thin like sheets of music paper.

Waiters know that the food for their tables is ready thanks to a clever number system on an LED screen in the corner. 1-50 means that the food for table 50 is available from kitchen number one. (There’s a similar number system in use at Wimbledon for court coverers, of which I was one for a few years while at university. No number means all is sunny, one means get ready to run on, two means tell the umpire to stop play and run on with the covers, and three means ‘dress’ the court after a rain delay. I digress.)

Before Jack and Cass’ main courses and my pasta, we shared a plank of seasonal meats including hams and salami, and Italian cheeses such as buffalo mozzarella with that “amazing” chilli jam. Also packed on the groaning plank of wood, balanced on our table on top of two tins of peeled tomatoes, were pickles, chillies, olives, caper berries and a crunchy salad.

Jack and Cass opted for the lamb cutlets for their mains, served on a slab of wood. Both said it was good, with a lot of meat, not too tough, and quite a bit of fat. Both also said that they would have liked it a bit pinker. They’re a choosy pair.

It would have been rude to work our way through the bread, antipasti, pasta, mains and sides (“posh chips” with olive oil and shavings of parmesan) and not also try dessert. So we somehow made room in our stomachs for affogato, a small scoop of vanilla ice cream over which is poured espresso. No complaints with the taste, but there really was not much ice cream. Cass asked for another scoop and our waiter kindly obliged.

We may have tried each course on the menu, but there was more to buy at the foot of the menu and also more clearly itemised in the cardboard casing the bill is served: Jamie Oliver merchandise. Yes, like in Hooters you can come away with branded t-shirts as well as tea towels, oven gloves, aprons, mugs and napkins. Oliver’s books are also dotted about (above), as well as tomes by his mentor Gennaro Contaldo, who in Oliver’s absence has overseen the opening of the Park Street restaurant.

Oliver will no doubt be overjoyed by the stunning look of his latest eponymous chain. And the majority of the food we tried was great, there were just a few too many niggles for this place to get a resounding endorsement quite yet.

Niggles aside, Jamie’s Italian will undoubtedly draw the punters to the top of Park Street. You better start practising how to queue now if you want a seat here in the next few weeks. And if you want a seat in the restaurant today on the first official day of opening, you may already have to be in the queue.

Jamie’s Italian, 89 Park Street, Clifton, Bristol. 0117 370 0265.

www.jamieoliver.com/italian/bristol