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Fifteen

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15 Westland Place, N1 7LP Full details & map

Café-bar: Italian

 
David Loftus

Time Out says   5 Users say 2/5 Rate it

Posted: Oct 18 2011

Jamie Oliver's original Fifteen is still going strong. On a recent visit we ate in the ground-floor trattoria: a lively, modern space, with a bar as you enter. The focus is on well-sourced, authentic ingredients, simply prepared and allowed to shine. Starters include a large range of antipasti, along with seafood and vegetable boards featuring some original matchings such as roasted beetroot with orange and oregano, and Sicilian octopus stew on bruschetta.

To start, mozzarella di bufala Campana with aubergine, pepper, ricotta salata and bruschetta was a perfect melding of luscious mozzarella, creamy ricotta and lightly roasted veg. A main of poussin with panzanella (a Tuscan bread salad of tomatoes, capers and Volpaia vinegar) came as beautifully tender, moist chicken, the tartness of the capers and vinegar in the salad bringing the dish to life. Fish of the day was an enormous whole bream, perfectly baked. A light, perfect panna cotta completed our dinner.

Staff were friendly and professional throughout. The more formal (and pricier) basement restaurant - serving the likes of seared sea trout fillet with fregola sarda, peas, courgettes and taggiasca black olive sauce - is quieter, discreetly retro and elegant, with an open kitchen; we wish it didn't do two-hour sittings, though.

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Fifteen details

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Address

Fifteen

15 Westland Place N1 7LP

Transport Old Street tube/rail

Telephone

020 3375 1515 premium

Fifteen website

Trattoria Lunch served noon-3pm daily. Dinner served 6-10pm daily. Main courses £14-£21. Restaurant Lunch served noon-3pm daily. Dinner served 6-10pm daily

Main courses £17.50-£23. Set lunch £26 2 courses, £30 3 courses, £36 4 courses

Credit cards AmEx, MC, V

Facilities

Babies and children welcome ( high chairs; nappy-changing facilities ), Booking essential ( restaurant ), Available for hire, Disabled ( toilet trattoria ), Dress ( smart casual )

Fifteen map

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Comments & ratings 2/5 (Average of 5 ratings)

Reena Herian
By Reena - Mar 13 2012
1/5

Dear Fifteen/Jamie Oliver,

I went to your restaurant on Saturday night with my parents and boyfriend. This was a very important meal, as my parents had come for a short visit to London for the first time, from my small home town and I wanted to show them an impressive London restaurant. I have been to Barbecoa before, so I thought Fifteen would also be a great place to go.

I was very, very wrong and extremely disappointed. Here's why:

1. Sitting:
We were sat in a booth between 2 closet doors (one with a pin code entry device on it) and could barely hear each other due to the shouting in the kitchen right behind us.

2. Appetizer:
-When asked if one order of bruschetta could feed 4 of us, our waitress said yes but the serving was so tiny and not enough. She said the complimentary bread would add to our appetizer to be enough, but it came out with a bowl of JUST oil, no vinaigrette.

3. The Mains:
- 2 of us had the lamb, which was very tiny and looked uninspiring. My dad pretended to like it, but I tried his and know he was just being nice.
- I had the gnocchi, which looked like vomit on a plate
- My mom had the wild mushroom risotto and it was blander than anything I've had in a while. She said "I don't think these people know anything about pasta"; then reading that Fifteen makes fresh pasta every morning made for great disappointment.

4. Dessert:
- Was actually good! The only part of the evening that I enjoyed.

My parents were very nice about the whole evening, but I know if they were back in my home town of Edmonton, Canada, they would have complained. To add insult to injury, the bill was probably higher than they've ever seen before and I just felt awful about the whole night.

Jamie, I don't know what's happened to Fifteen- I know you're busy with so many other projects, but I really feel you have let this one fall by the wayside.

Thank you for your time.

A very disheartened,

Reena Herian

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By Steve - Feb 5 2012
1/5

Without doubt the worst place i've been to ever! One main dish just tasted completly burnt. Others had no taste to them what so ever. Manager very casual in the apologies by leaning against a wall and explaining that the chef may have been making the dish so often today that he got bored! Yes the manager actually justified the bad food by saying the chef might of got bored! To top off the evening I even had to catch a glipse of the state of the kitchen... I won't go into to much detail, all you need to know, it was bad!!! The only good thing about this place was the waiter. Even he looked embarrassed by the standards of everything else.

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By Stephen - Jan 8 2012
1/5

Wow, went yesterday in a party of 9. Without doubt the worst dining experience I have ever had the misfortune to experience. DO NOT GO!

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By Patricia and Richard - Sep 9 2011
5/5

Contrary to the comments from other reviewers, we enjoyed an excellent lunch in the restaurant downstairs. The service was the best we have had anywhere. It was meant to be a special occasion and did not disappoint. Good luck to the enterprise!

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By verzauberter - Jul 19 2011
1/5

And they did it again!

There were the same disappointments as mentioned from AussieTraveller.
Service: unfriendly and unprofessional. Plates were given to the opposite site of the table, and taken away only after we asked for that – twice! Meal were absolutely not worth the money and definitely not worth the time to get there.
Again: as they do take even more money as other restaurants, I get even more critical. But in this case this was not necessary. Expecting “Pub foot” only would have left us with disappointment.

What worries me is that they had already feedback half a year ago and nothing changed. I will not find out if they might change it in the future as I will never visit this restaurant again.

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By AussieTraveller2011 - Jan 29 2011

We arrived early, excited to have a cocktail before dinner. We were directed to some seats, we had to slump our winter coats onto the table, as we were told by the maitre d' that as we were dinning downstairs he couldn't take our coats! 20mins passed & no one had come to take an order for drinks, I had to go & ask someone to come over. We were then seated at our table & the waitress came over & asked if we were "ready to order our meals?" We hadn't even ordered wine yet! The waitress took only 2 drink orders from a table of 6 & then began walking off. A member of our party asked the waitress "where the scallops were from?" To which she replied "Scotland..I think.? I don't really know". She didn't even offer to go and find out, the service was absolutly appalling! The entree's were ok, the mains awful! The artichoke purée with the scallops was so salty, it completely over powered everything else on the plate! The fish stew was also too salty, advice to the chef's, learn to season food correctly before charging outrageous prices! The Lamb was served with spinach, 4 leaves! It was just a bowl of shredded lamb, hard to stomach even by a carnivore! I though Jamie was always trying to get us to eat healthier but to serve our dishes without vegetables was disgraceful. If Jamie had himself been given the service & food we had he would be embarrassed, and he should be. We expressed our disappointment in the meals to the waiter & were met with a rude response. Regarding the lack of vegetables with our meals the answer we got was "here is the menu, what you see is what you get, there is no secrets" and "upstairs is where they serve side dishes & this should have been explain when we booked" . We were then handed the bill without asking for it, they clearly wanted us to leave. The bill came to over £400! £50 of which was a 'discretionary service charge'. We left feeling incredibly disappointed & with no incentive to EVER return.

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By Kidyamlo - May 15 2010

Seconded. Fully behind the concept but for 60 quid a head (for the "tasting" menu, which is nothing of the sort, but simply a fixed menu) the food needs to be impeccable, not sub-par gastro-pub rubbish. And it's looking really dated, something you could overlook if the food was good enough to prevent you staring at the walls.

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By Tassa - Apr 2 2010

Fifteen is the worst restaurant ever, ridiculously overpriced for poor quality food and uninspiring service

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