8 June, Thursday

Another culinary adventure that we had planned for this trip was a meal at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant. Again for the non Food Network addicts out there, Jamie Oliver is a local chef who started with a program (and a book) some years ago called “The Naked Chef” and who has made quite a name for himself since. He owns three or four high end restaurants and decided that what he wanted to do with his fame is teach underprivileged youth to do what has brought him a lot of joy (and money). Fifteen is an experiment in teaching and it seems to be highly successful. The restaurant is making money hand over fist and profits go to funding the education of motivated local young people. It also puts on one hell of a menu.

We had reservations for early lunch, 1215, so we had to find a new tube route and then actually find the restaurant when we’d gotten off the tube.

As it turned out, this was not a problem. The directions on Fifteen’s website were accurate to a fault and finding the place was easy. Figuring out what to do in a relatively seedy section of the business district was another thing entirely.

I think I’m a little ashamed to say that we went to Starbucks. Not for the coffee, not for the familiarity (I hasten to assure you), but mostly for the free Internet connection.

Sat around, read e-mail, sucked on COLD drinks, and generally had a very quiet hour.

I’ll try not to be star struck while I’m doing this, but it was very cool that, as the girl at the reservation desk was leading us down to our table, we met Jamie Oliver in the stairwell. It was also cool that, as there was a TV crew there filming a special about this place, Jamie Oliver was doing the cooking so we got our meals direct from the master’s hands. What I most fervently hope is that we didn’t end up as a part of this TV special (although I know our meals did).

It was obvious that the reservations girl was on her first ‘real’ job. And most of the wait staff, and the sous chefs. About the only people that gave off the vibe of “I’m a professional, I do this for a living” were the maitre d’hotel, and Jamie Oliver himself. The whole place had this incredible feel of, well I hate to put it in such a corny fashion, but I can’t think of any other way to do it, hope. Relief. Someone’s finally giving me a chance, this is my ticket, I’m not going to screw this up. The service was superb and the food was out of this world.

I had a wonderful cold pork and tuna mayonnaise with watercress appetizer (it sounds weird, but the combination was sublime). Andrew had a crab salad that was even tempting to me and that’s saying a lot (I don’t do bugs and crabs is nothing but aquatic bugs). Pork for Andrew as a main course, I had chicken with pesto. I have GOT to try roasting chicken wrapped around lemons. It was incredible. We had to have dessert. Okay, we didn’t really have to have dessert, let’s just say we couldn’t not have dessert under the circumstances. We were both, however, so stuffed that we ended up sharing a piece of raspberry cheesecake and a scoop of basil ice cream. I think I have worked out how to do the basil ice cream and I’m really hot for giving it a try at home. The cheesecake was depressing though. Not that it wasn’t good, it was wonderful. I just can’t figure out how they managed to make cheesecake fluffy. I make a pretty mean pumpkin cheesecake, but no one in their right mind is going to describe it as fluffy. Maybe it has to do with the pumpkin……

Anyway, our only other goal for the day was to find somewhere that Andrew could purchase another pair of shorts. Being that, when we packed, we were assuming that the weather would be somewhat like it has been at home, he only packed two pairs of shorts. So did I, for the record, but I don’t tend to get as hot as he does. This doesn’t mean, however, that I’ve been wearing jeans the last three days. So we got back on the tube and got off again at Knightsbridge. Right next to Harrods. Right in the center of the most incredible seething mass of hot tourists purchasing high fashion that I ever hope to be exposed to.

Found and purchased shorts. Came back to hotel. Napped.

Big lunch. Really big lunch. Sleep now, don’t eat dinner.

Tomorrow we plan to go to Whipsnade zoo.

Observations for the week 6/8/06:

Reaching back to Inverness and the one legged Kiwi, I’ve got to add a “Fun With Non-American English” here. People actually, honestly do say things like “fair dinkum”. Granted, it’s Aussies and Kiwis that do it, but honest, really, he piped up with “fair dinkum?!” more than once.

Hairy coos, or shaggy kine (for the Hawaiian audience this is not ‘kine’ as in ‘da kine’, but kine as in kine. No I don’t know how the two words could possibly be related.), are also cute. But not as cute as the Jerseys.

There is something about the uniforms, or perhaps it’s the increased discipline that is inherent in British schools, that makes British school children much easier to take than American school children. Andrew mentioned the Peepratory school up the road from us (it’s a very valid observation by the way. All these little girls in their pale lilac dresses with their purple hair ornaments looked remarkably like Peeps), we’re also just around the corner from the Queen’s Gate Girl’s School. Again, hoards of little (through teenaged) girls, dressed in blue blazers and skirts, pale blue blouses, dark blue ties, and STRAW BOATER HATS with pale blue ribbons around the crown. They are absolutely adorable. And the boys in their dark trousers, white shirts, neckties, and blazers with the school crest on the breast pocket give off such an aura of, well, being under control that it’s hard not to find them impressive. And it’s not just the ultra rich schools either. Yesterday at the Natural History Museum there were hoards of kids from what were obviously not the snooty prep schools that you find in downtown Chelsea. But there it is, they were all dressed in trousers and school sweaters with their school crest embroidered on and they looked so much better behaved than a similar group of American school kids. Granted I can’t say for sure that they were actually better behaved, but their appearance created quite an impression.

African (Senegalese?) French is a much more lyrical and lovely language than Continental French. There was a woman at one of the boulangeries just around the corner that was having an animated conversation with her co-workers, they rattling off spiky elegant Parisian French, she responding with this musical liquid gargling French. I was charmed.

And I would like to note that while we have uniformly managed to get COLD beer (despite the warnings of so many that the British serve their beer warm) we have not been able to get cold soda, juice, or ferslushinger water unless we order it with ice. Really. Even the stuff that comes out of the refrigerated sections of the local Waitrose (supermarket) is considerably less refrigerated than you’d expect. Warm Coca Cola. Urgh.