Water lot of pukka projects

Jamie Oliver is known for undertaking culinary missions - so what was the appeal of designing kitchens for homes in the Water neighbourhood of Leisurecorp's element-themed Jumeirah Golf Estates? Here the celebrity chef explains the appeal of the project and reveals plans for his two new Dubai restaurants.

You're known for championing 'good causes', such as your campaign to improve school dinners in the UK and your pledge to teach the fast-food generation to cook; what was the appeal of this project?

It's far more selfish; this is about basically having permission to create a food network, which is quite socially based.

There are going to be 50,000 people living within the perimeter (of the Water neighbourhood). So I've basically got a free reign to do what I want on this project, which is really exciting.

There's not really one thing that would have made me do the job - it's not just doing the kitchens in conjunction with the brand Poggenpohl that's the big appeal, because frankly I'm very busy. I only work with a small handful of people and all of them I've worked with for several years now.

Part of me feels like I should be apologising for coming to an incredibly rich place and doing something that isn't about charity or poor people or neglect, but this is actually something for me to really sink my teeth into and try to express myself without any boundaries.

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But education is always at the heart of anything I do. Water will also feature a 'Kitchen Library', a sort of lending space for culinary equipment and cookbooks for budding chefs, as well as a ‘Grab and Go' retail concept offering residents lovely nutritious meals to enjoy at home.

It's also about sourcing proper, good, local produce. In a place like Dubai a lot of stuff is imported - does that mean that the food you get here can't be incredible, sourced to perfection and sold to you by someone who is an authority on it? I say no.

So we'll have the restaurants; the ability to service all of the apartments with cooking lessons in their home or in the school we're having there; we're going to offer meals that are half-prepped for you to finish off cooking yourself - all sorts really. So whether you're a beginner or a good cook, we'll be helping people to up their game. And that, I think, is really sexy.

Tell us about your upcoming restaurant concepts.

Restaurant number one is Jamie's Italian. We have two open already in the UK and there will be another before the end of the year. They're average price - our margin structure's totally different [to a normal restaurant]; you can't do stuff cheap that's really good.

We manage to, but only because our business requires us to be very, very busy all the time and have more than one restaurant. That's the only way it can work.

But I absolutely love it; all the pasta's made on site, beautiful meat's grilled in our grill section - we've brought in new technology to cook the meat there. We have these plates that sit on the grill getting screaming hot then you put that on top of the meat.

In Italy they call the method ‘al mattone', which means ‘under the brick'; they used to just get a brick and wrap it in foil and sit it on top of spatchcocked chickens, but we've made our own one. It's a really dynamic and quick method - you can cook a steak evenly in three-and-a-half minutes.

Then the barbeque restaurant concept is still being worked on, but basically it's delicious, medieval cooking, but done sexy. So think Nobu but then think barbeque.