Day 3: London to Oxford

We had an amazing dinner at Fifteen last night. Fifteen is a restaurant which Jamie Oliver (yes, him again—you might think that I am spending all my time in London chasing after him like a teenage groupie; you wouldn't be far from the truth) started seven years ago in order to train at-risk English youth to be chefs and kitchen workers. All the profits from the restaurant go into the Fifteen Foundation to support the teaching efforts. So it is a very worthy cause. And it was a very worthy dinner. It was a tasting menu. I’m not going to tell you the cost. If it were in dollars, you would think it reasonable.

I’m only going to tell you briefly what I tasted. If I told you everything, I would vastly exceed the time I have at this internet café in Oxford. I had burrata, zucchini and ricotto cheese-stuffed ravioli, a pollack (fish) for the main course, and panna cotta with rhubarb for dessert. Just great.

I’m in Oxford now, just down the street from All Souls College. The new and the old side-by-side. We had a lovely lunch at our hotel Malmaison, a refurbished prison in the Old Castle. Small rooms (Katherine reminded me that they were originally cells after all) and ours must have been inhabited at one time by Robert Ogilvie. His name is on the door. Lunch was a smoked haddock chowder and a spring vegetable crumble. Just what we needed on this very chilly spring day.

Can you tell we're having a good time?