On any given service there will be six or seven trainees working with three qualified chefs plus Jamie, who promises four days a week.The menu reads like a Jamie cookbook, with its "kinda sashimi", "my mate Mauro's bresaola" and "my favourite new salad".As you'd expect from a River Cafe boy with Gennaro Contaldo of Passione as mentor, the food is mainly Italian, and mainly great. There are no reduced jus, fancy trickles or hotelly splashes, just real, hard-working flavours that come from using superlative ingredients and knowing when to leave well enough alone.The bresaola (£9) is a cute plate of rosy, wafer-thin meat that tastes like smoky carpaccio (bresaola is the beef version of prosciutto – cured and air-dried pork – and is not normally smoked) under a how-does-your-garden-grow scatter of clementines, dandelion, rocket, mint and the rare peppery, curly Trevigiano radicchio. Gorgeous.Lasagnetti (£9) shows a mastery of pasta, gliding like velvet over the tongue in a lush though overly creamy ragu of chunky chanterelles, pieds de mouton, ceps and other wild mushrooms. Impressive.Mains are very Brit-Italian, again showing great produce-sourcing.

They are also rather large, although they may shrink as soon as someone has time to work out the profit margins. A grilled organic veal chop flavoured with anchovy and rosemary (£17.50) is good meat, smartly cooked and rested long enough for the juices to reconvene within. It comes with a cheesy fennel gratin that's so good, I want it for Sunday-night tea every week.There is nothing new about searing a fillet of sea bass (£17.50), but Jamie perches his on a forest floor of baby turnips, roast fennel and golden rounds of potato, giving it a nice Sunday-roast feel.To finish, passionfruit tart (£6) treads the fine line between tang and sweetness, and tastes richly creamy, warm and very alive.The wine list, by the way, is a beauty, with sassy Italians and sun-ny Australians galore, although there are no bargains. The food too is pricier than I had expected, pushing Fifteen into the big league along with neighbours Eyre Brothers and the Real Greek.But take away all the hype, and what you have is a good, fresh, very modern, young restaurant with a good vibe and great kar- ma.

I think there are gaps in Jamie Oliver's knowledge, but – just like the trainees – he's learning on the job.The critics call his attempt to turn unemployed kids into confident cooks Pygmalion-like, but the real transformation has been that of a pretty-boy television celebrity into a serious, focussed chef By George, I think he's got it.. Spoon+ at Sanderson 50 Berners Street, London W1, tel: 020 7300 1400 The restaurant: the mix'n'match, do-it-yourself menu of Spoon is part of three-starred French chef Alain Ducasse's plot to take over the world. Already there are Spoons in France, Mauritius and Japan, as well as this gloriously modern space in Ian Schrager's hotel. Ordering is as easy as one, two, three; as in one/pan seared tuna, two/satay sauce, and three/wok-fried vegetables. The book: Spoon by Alain Ducasse (Conran Octopus).St Petroc's Bistro 4 New Street, Padstow, tel: 01841 532 700 The bistro: one of the many Rick Stein businesses that has earned this Cornish seaside town the name Padstein. Up the hill from the more famous Fish Restaurant, St Petroc's is lighter, brighter and lower-priced, with such straightforward offerings as moules marini? and cod on spring-onion mash. The book: Rick Stein's Food Heroes (BBC).The Conservatory The Lanesborough, Hyde Park Corner, London SW1, tel: 020 7259 5599 The restaurant: you either love it or you hate it but it's hard to be neutral about this OTT dining-room with its Brighton Pavilion feel, potted palms and moody chinoiserie.

Equally provocative is chef Paul Gayler's "modern eclectic" menu with its hotel favourites and Asian and Mediterranean flavours. The book: Flavours of the World by Paul Gayler (Kyle Cathie).. Last month, something strange happened in a small Costwolds market town. Usually home to just 3,000 people, Chipping Campden was overrun with an equal number of visitors who had come to celebrate the most unlikely of things: the Brussels sprout.Except for those who gathered in Chipping Campden didn't call them Brussels sprouts, but "British sprouts". And they weren't cooking them with roast turkey as a warm-up for Christmas dinner. They had gathered to reinvent the smallest and least-loved of the brassicas (the group of vegetables including broccoli, radish, mustard plant and cabbage) and give an ailing British industry a much-needed boost.As we all know, sprouts have something of a reputation. Most of us probably had them piled on to our school dinner plates after they'd been left to boil for half an hour.