Two years ago, I never even heard his name. Nowa­days, after a nice intro­duc­tion by my girl­friend Andrea, I cook by his books and watch his TV shows reg­u­larly: Jamie Oliver. One of his series (Jamie’s Kitchen) was about him grab­bing fif­teen under­priv­iliged kids, giv­ing them a com­plete chef edu­ca­tion whilst build­ing up the restau­rant they would be work­ing in. That met into the Cheeky Chops Char­ity and the Fif­teen Restau­rant we wanted to have lunch at.

As the tube strike was still on, we had to get there by bus. I wish I had had this nice, free Metro PDA appli­ca­tion, that knows all pub­lic trans­port con­nec­tions I many major cities around the world, then — that would have made it all a lot eas­ier. How­ever, after brows­ing the avail­able maps and timeta­bles we finally got to Old Street Sta­tion. “Right up the road and then right at West­land Place.”, where the direc­tions I got from the reser­va­tions agent on the phone. Well, Old Street Sta­tion is at some big T-crossing, so we were not quite sure which street to walk down. We started to ask passers-by. I thought everone would know this famous restau­rant — big mis­take! It took us half an hour to find some­one who could give us decent direc­tions and to finally reach the restaurant.

The restau­rant itself was worth a closer look: The ground floor is taken up by the “Fif­teen Trat­to­ria” — a relaxed place to meet and eat with­out all the usual has­sle you have in those “famous” restau­rants. You can get break­fast from 8.30am to 11.00am or have lunch from 12 to 3pm. It’s also “afford­able” with pasta start­ing at £7 and main courses start­ing at £14. Yep — in Lon­don one Pound is worth the same one Euro is elsewhere.

Down­stairs is the actual “Fif­teen Restau­rant” — a very styl­ish place in some retro-space-mix design. A very cool pink air­brush paint­ing dec­o­rates the main wall right to the open kitchen. Also all the sofas are made of pink leather, whereas the tables are dark wooden and the chairs are those magic white s-shaped Philippe Stark 70s platic ones. It definitly has it’s very own style — like it or not.

We had some very good lunch start­ing with some fresh made bread with very good olive oil. After that we had some very good fish served, accom­pa­nied by some red wine. On the fin­ish­ing line a great vanilla and grappa panna cotta was served as a majes­tic fin­ish. All-in-all the food was from very-good to high-end and the ser­vices was extra­or­di­nary — that’s very well worth another visit!

Stansted is as far away from Lon­don as Lübeck is from Ham­burg. It’s a shame that it’s called London-Stansted as you might think it’s just another air­port near Lon­don. Instead you have to take a bus or the Stansted Express to Lon­don. That’ll add another £24 for an open return ticket (valid for one month to Lon­don and back to Stansted, can also be bought dur­ing the flight for £22) or £13.90 for a cheap day return ticket (valid only one day) for the Stansted Express to your fare. The guy sell­ing me the tick­ets was nice enough to sell me the open return ticket instead of the cheap day return ticket, thus dou­bling the price on my credit-card bill. So watch out what they’re doing when you buy your tickets.

We arrived at Liv­er­pool Street Sta­tion at 12 o’clock. I reserved a table for lunch at the Fif­teen for 2 o’clock. The Fif­teen is located near Old Street Sta­tion, just two sta­tions away from Liv­er­pool Street Sta­tion, so we had plenty of time and decided to head right south to the River Thames and the Lon­don Tower. Just then, we heard the bad news: No tube today. The whole tube staff was on strike the one day we where in Lon­don. Thanks a lot guys!

Nev­er­the­less we headed south by feet and had a very nice walk through the city to the Lon­don Tower and the Tower Bridge. I really like the bridge’s archi­tec­ture and it’s impres­sive bas­cule mech­a­nism. If you ever spend some time in Lon­don, you should take the guided tour and view it.

Have lunch at the Fif­teen…

We started our tour early in the morn­ing on wednes­day going to Lübeck Blankensee Air­port (LBC). Wow! What an air­port! I’ve never seen such a small air­port in the mid­dle of nowhere.

We arrived there at about seven o’clock as RyanAir asks you to check-in two hours ahead of sched­ule. Well, at Lübeck you don’t really have to — the main hall with the check-in desks was lit­er­ally deserted.

After a futile hour of wait­ing we could finaly check-in and pass the pas­sen­ger con­trols to get into the fully RyanAir branded depar­ture tent. This really is a big tent, one of those you’re used to from fun fairs or street mar­kets. Filled with some alu­minium camp­ing chairs and tables and a small coffee-bar on one side it resem­bles some kind of a hol­i­day atmos­phere. There are also sev­eral exits labeld with RyanAir’s des­ti­na­tions from Lübeck. The Stansted exit is on the other end af the tent seper­ated by cus­toms and pass­port check where sud­denly a large queue arose — one hour before the sched­uled take off. I’ll never under­stand peo­ple que­ing up in such sit­u­a­tions instead of wait­ing a cou­ple a min­utes for a less crowded moment to pass such a bot­tle neck. It was easy calculations:About an hour of time until take off, a max­i­mum of 130 pas­sen­gers to go through cus­toms. We relaxed and had a cof­fee. After that, pass­port check was vacant again.

Next up was the ugly part of fly­ing RyanAir: The call to arms! When the atten­dant showed up at the tent’s Stansted exit every­one ran to that exit to get on the plane fast and to get some good seat. Well, the seats are all the same I think — so…

Flight time was from 09.20 to 09.45. Dif­fer­ent time­zones make up for very fast flights!

Head on to famous London…

Lonely Planet Lon­don (Lonely Planet City Maps)

Lonely Planet. Lonely Planet Pub­li­ca­tions 1999, Land­karte, 672 Seiten, € 4,97