Sitting down to chat with Jamie Oliver, it feels like you've known him forever. Which, if you own a television or pay even the slightest bit of attention to pop culture, isn't far from the truth.
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It's been almost 20 years since a fresh-faced Oliver with his shaggy blonde mop of hair was spotted by the BBC and plucked from the pans at London's iconic River Cafe for a documentary, and then The Naked Chef television series.
Then came the cookbooks - there's been more than 20 - and the constant stream of television series which has made him a permanent fixture on screens and book shelves around the world ever since. Coupled with dozens of restaurants, a magazine, cookery schools and licensing, he's nothing short of cooking royalty.
It was 2011 when family-friendly restaurant chain Jamie's Italian landed Down Under, with six restaurants opening across the country in Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. The first of its kind opened in Oxford, England in 2008, and these days there's more than 60 of the eateries worldwide.
The British chef's own restaurant group just bought back all six of the Australian restaurants after previous operators and co-owners Keystone Group went into receivership.
"My immediate reaction was how do we save it? I didn't want to close it up. We had 400 staff give or take in the country, and they're amazing," Oliver says, visiting Australia for a week to re-launch the Jamie's Italian brand.
"There were other people bidding for it. So it was still competitive. I'd never had to do it before - imagine trying to buy you off you.
"It was just a slightly uncomfortable seven or eight months when we didn't know what was gonna happen and we worked really hard to get it this way and we kind of got there and I'm really grateful for that. And now this is 100 per cent wholly ours, which is great."
As part of the new guard, Oliver has brought on board old friends and former restaurant partners Tobie Puttock and Matt Skinner. The trio co-founded Fifteen, a not-for-profit restaurant providing training opportunities in the kitchen for disadvantaged youth. The restaurant launched in London in 2002 and is still going strong. The Melbourne branch opened in 2006 but closed its doors a few years ago.
"Matt, who's in my opinion one of Australia's finest communicators of wine, is gonna be really looking at wine and wine training and how do we push that boundary with how we look at wine in each individual restaurant," Oliver says.
"Tobie I've known for a long time, we worked at the River Cafe together. He spent his life cooking Italian food and working in Italy and he's a Melbourne boy and he's gonna just be my eyes and ears and just keep an eye on things for me really. In all of the stuff that's happened I think what will happen is we'll just be tighter and more like a family and keep a view of things."
The restaurant has been given a bit of a subtle shake-up - the uniform and crockery and have changed. The menu has also been extended with more super food salads, steaks and a handful of other changes.
Oliver says Jamie's Italian will serve half a million people a year in Australia and 7 million a year in Britain. He uses only ethically-sourced, sustainable ingredients and wants to prove that a business can serve quality produce with a clear conscience and still be successful.
With a renewed focus in the Australian market, could we see more of Jamie here? Perhaps even Oliver's London chain Barbecoa steakhouses?
"I'd love to think so. I think it would be good here, I think it would stand out. I think celebrating Australian meat with wood and smoke will be amazing," he says.
"Certainly we're going to get our feet under the door and just kind of steady the ship here and then without question I'll be considering loads of options. And maybe something smaller and more neighbourhood as well. But it's all about people, I'm going to sort of see how our teams are, if we've got the talent within the family to do it, and I'd love to see Barbecoa here; I really would."
Other than being at the helm of the Jamie Oliver empire, his passion lies in making the world a healthier place and combating diet-related disease.
Oliver campaigned heavily for a sugary drinks tax in Britain, which was subsequently introduced by the government in 2016, and believes it could work in Australia too. The tax is designed to help combat obesity by increasing the price of sugary soft drinks and using the new revenue on sports funding for UK primary schools.
He's equally concerned about public health in Australia, where he says the cost of type 2 diabetes in 2016 was $6 billion.
"It's a huge amount of money. It's a massive problem and a real problem of our times," he says.
"There's too many calories in the atmosphere. Food manufacturers have been mis-using fat and sugar for a long time now and I think whether it's advertising, whether it's vending or what's available at [the tuckshop] - every corner's so easy to make the wrong decision and so hard to make the right decision. Even if you consciously wanted to make a good decision, you have to work a little bit.
"I think there's definitely a long way to go, because we haven't curbed the trend. Do I think we can? Yes. Countries are starting to change around the world."
Oliver believes change will come with making it easier and cheaper to buy the good stuff, and a little more awkward to buy the bad stuff. That, and getting people in the kitchen, something he's been trying to do for two decades.
"The quickest way to combat type 2 diabetes or diet-related disease or obesity or even budget is to know how to cook. The most powerful thing you can do is just to know the basics of cooking," he says.
The Jamie's Ministry of Food program, which launched in Australia in 2010, still runs classes across the country teaching people to shop better, read nutrition labels and cook simple and nutritious meals. Over the years, he's released cookbooks and television series focussed on saving money, and eating more vegetables. He took aim at the quality of the food served up in British school canteens in 2005's Jamie's School Dinners.
He also set out to dispel the myth that cooking good food takes time with the Jamie's 30-Minute Meals and Jamie's 15-Minute Meals cookbooks and television series. Years on, these recipes are still a bone of contention with many, who think the times are heavily under-estimated.
"When we did 30-Minute Meals you get people chirping up saying this and that and the other about time. So when I did the 15-Minutes Meals, we would get teenagers to test the recipes and if they didn't get in [under 15 minutes], it never got in the book."
"So when we did the book and people said it didn't take 15 minutes, then you can send them a little link saying look, this is what happened here. This person's 12 or 13 so I think you can do it.
"It's about getting organised, and always the first time you do it, you're reading and cooking, it's quite clanky, but once you've done it once you kind of get into the vibe of it and you can rattle it out super quick. Reading a book and cooking it's a bit less straightforward."
With the Jamie's Italian deal finalised and the restaurants back in the 'family', Oliver has plans to get back to Australia as soon as later this year or early in 2018. He wants to try and pop into his Canberra and Adelaide restaurants, which he didn't get to visit this time around. But he also just wants to have some downtime in the country he says now feels "a bit like coming home", and bring out his actual family, including wife Jools and their five children.
"It's another excuse to get back more regularly now. The kids are a little bit older and I really want to bring them out for the whole summer holiday, and just do six weeks out here and have some down time as well, not just work time," he says.
"But to be honest whether it's work or pleasure I'm happy to take it to get to Aussie. It's always a pleasure, I've got lots of friends here, and there's always something exciting happening with food."
