Jamie Oliver
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Jamie Oliver trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jamie Oliver went from helping out in his parents' village pub to becoming one of the most recognisable cooks on the planet. Along the way he has fronted dozens of television series, sold cookbooks by the million, built and lost a restaurant empire, and picked fights with governments on two continents over what children eat for lunch. This quiz gathers the fun facts behind that career. There are questions on his school days and first kitchen jobs, the mentors who shaped him, the series that made his name, his campaigns in Britain and the United States, his honours and his family. A few cover the recipes that got him into trouble abroad and the surprising places he has turned up, from a motoring show to an animated film. It is pitched for anyone who has cooked from one of his books or watched him on screen. Most questions are gettable with a little thought, a handful are for devoted fans, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which BBC Two cooking series, launched in 1999, was the first that Jamie Oliver presented?
The Naked Chef
The Naked Chef built each episode around a moment in his own life, such as a hen night or an evening spent babysitting.
Q 02Which processed canteen food did Jamie Oliver make notorious in his 2005 series on school dinners?
Turkey Twizzlers
Turkey Twizzlers were only 34% turkey, and after the series several big caterers announced they would stop serving them in schools.
Q 03Jamie Oliver voiced which character in the British release of Pixar's Ratatouille?
The health inspector
The health inspector who turns up to check the restaurant's kitchen has his voice in the UK version, a part Pixar picked him for.
Q 04Jamie Oliver's 2025 television documentary was about which learning difficulty, one he has himself?
Dyslexia
Dyslexia did not stop him publishing more than 30 cookbooks, the first of them when he was still in his twenties.
Q 05Jamie Oliver was the advertising face of which British supermarket chain for eleven years from 2000?
Sainsbury's
Sainsbury's reportedly paid him about £1.2 million a year, and the partnership ended after its Christmas 2011 advert.
Q 06In 2016 Jamie Oliver outraged Spaniards by adding which sausage to his own version of paella?
Chorizo
Chorizo does not belong in the Valencian rice dish, critics said, and one compared his recipe to a famously botched church fresco restoration.
Q 07Which number names the London restaurant where Jamie Oliver trained unemployed young people as chefs?
Fifteen
Fifteen was the size of the first class of trainees, whose progress in the kitchen was filmed for the documentary series Jamie's Kitchen.
Q 08Which instrument did Jamie Oliver play in Scarlet Division, the band he joined as a schoolboy?
Drums
Drums were his part in Scarlet Division, and years later the band performed the theme song for one of his cooking series.
Q 09Jamie Oliver was born and raised in the village of Clavering, in which English county?
Essex
Essex is where his parents ran the Cricketers, the village pub whose kitchen gave him his first cooking practice.
Q 10To which broadcaster did Jamie Oliver move in 2002 after the BBC chose not to renew his contract?
Channel 4
Channel 4 launched him with a documentary about training unemployed youngsters, after the BBC objected to his supermarket adverts.
Q 11Which young-adult bestseller was the first novel Jamie Oliver ever read to the end, at the age of 38?
Catching Fire
Catching Fire is the second book of the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, so the first novel he ever finished was a sequel.
Q 12Which Italian chef, who grew up on the Amalfi Coast, is known as Jamie Oliver's mentor?
Gennaro Contaldo
Gennaro Contaldo met him in a London restaurant kitchen in the 1990s, and later developed the menus for his high-street pasta chain.
Q 13At which London restaurant was Jamie Oliver working when a BBC documentary crew filmed him in 1997?
The River Café
The River Café was the subject of a Christmas documentary, and his unscripted appearance in it caught the BBC's eye.
Q 21Which award did Jamie Oliver win in 2010 for campaigning to change how Britons and Americans eat?
TED Prize
TED Prize organisers praised his push for change at both the individual and governmental levels, first in Britain and then in America.
Q 22Which farmer, a childhood friend of Jamie Oliver, co-hosted a Friday night cooking show with him from 2014?
Jimmy Doherty
Jimmy Doherty has been his friend since they were small boys in the same village, and for the early series he built do-it-yourself kit such as a tandoor oven and a hog roaster.
Q 23Jamie Oliver filmed a celebrity café cooking show on the world's longest pleasure pier, in which seaside town?
Southend-on-Sea
Q 14Which honour did Jamie Oliver receive in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to hospitality?
MBE
MBE stands for Member of the Order of the British Empire, and he was 28 years old when he was appointed.
Q 15Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution began in Huntington, a city in which US state?
West Virginia
West Virginia's Huntington had been labelled one of the unhealthiest cities in America, which is why he chose it for the series.
Q 16Which American television award did Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution win in 2010?
An Emmy
An Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program followed the first season, yet low ratings saw the second pulled from the schedule after two episodes.
Q 17In which English city did Jamie Oliver open the first branch of his Jamie's Italian chain in 2008?
Oxford
Oxford's branch grew into a chain of 42 British restaurants at its peak, before the group collapsed in 2019.
Q 18Jamie Oliver left school at 16 with only two GCSEs, one in art and the other in which subject?
Geology
Geology and art were his only passes, so he trained at a London catering college before finding work in restaurant kitchens.
Q 19In which Yorkshire town did Jamie Oliver set up his Ministry of Food in 2008 to teach basic cooking?
Rotherham
Rotherham residents were asked to pass each recipe on to friends and family, so that cooking skills would spread across the town.
Q 20What nickname for ammonia-treated beef trimmings did Jamie Oliver attack on American television in 2011?
Pink slime
Pink slime is treated with ammonia gas in the factory, but for the cameras he soaked beef trimmings in liquid ammonia instead.
Southend-on-Sea's pier reaches more than a mile into the Thames Estuary, far enough that a railway carries visitors to the end where the café stands.
Q 24Oliver's Twist, a Jamie Oliver series shown in over 70 countries, puns on a novel by which author?
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, and the cooking series that borrowed its name was made to be shown outside the UK.
Q 25Jamie Oliver's first job was as a pastry chef at the Neal Street Restaurant, owned by which television chef?
Antonio Carluccio
Antonio Carluccio ran the Covent Garden restaurant from 1981 and bought it in 1989, and its kitchen gave the young cook his first grounding in Italian food.
Q 26On Top Gear, Jamie Oliver tried to make which dish in the back of a camper van as the Stig drove it?
A green salad
A green salad was the challenge, tossed in the back of his own Volkswagen Microbus, which had been fitted with a Porsche engine.
Q 27Which Iron Chef defeated Jamie Oliver in a battle over the fish cobia on Iron Chef America?
Mario Batali
Mario Batali, a famed Italian-American chef, beat a challenger whose own Italian mentor was working beside him as a sous-chef.
Q 28Which of these is the name of Jamie Oliver's third daughter, a younger sister to Poppy and Daisy?
Petal Blossom Rainbow
Petal Blossom Rainbow has two older sisters, Poppy Honey Rosie and Daisy Boo Pamela, and a younger brother called Buddy Bear Maurice.
Q 29By what nickname is Jamie Oliver's wife, the former model Juliette Norton, usually known?
Jools
Jools married him in July 2000, the year after his first series reached television, and the couple went on to have five children.
Q 30The title of Jamie Oliver's 2008 series Jamie's Ministry of Food refers to a British ministry from which war?
World War II
World War II brought food rationing to Britain, and the original Ministry of Food was there to help people eat well in spite of it.