Little chefs learn their stuff

We live in interesting times. Now that young, newly trained chefs and untutored domestic goddesses can knock such culinary legends as Delia Smith and Marco Pierre White off their lofty kitchen perches, the race is on to find the next cooking superstar. Where will he come from?

The chances are that Westminster College will figure in the equation. Westminster is London's oldest hotel school. Established in 1890 as a plumbers' college on the philanthropic whim of the wealthy Coutts banking family, the college began offering a three-year 'Cookery Day School for Boys' in 1910. Today, after nearly 100 years turning out your basic professional chefs - the kind who run two-star hotel kitchens throughout the country - Westminster has, unwittingly perhaps, reinvented itself as the birthplace of the celebrity chef.

The college's most recent product is one Jamie Oliver. Jamie joined in 1991 to study for his diploma, following the trail of hand whisks left by former pupils Antony Worrall Thompson and Ainsley Harriott. 'Jamie wasn't a great chef then,' says Peter Richards, a lecturer at the college in the early Nineties. 'I could have pointed to others before him who would scale the culinary heights. But what he did have was passion. A passion for learning, a passion for good food. He was also a bit of a Jack-the-lad. Not like he is now, that's obviously manufactured for TV, but a bit of a lad nonetheless.'

To find out who might be the next Jamie, I spent a day at the college. Students on the three-year chef's diploma spend about 25 hours a week in one of the college's ten training kitchens. They start off preparing lunch for fellow students, work their way up via one of the best college staff refectories (the day I was there, pig's trotters, milk-fed veal or wild-mushroom tartlets were on offer) before reaching the zenith of their student careers: cooking for the college's public restaurant.

This is the jewel in Westminster's crown. A grand 120-seater Victorian dining-room, it provides the residents of Pimlico with a beautifully prepared three-course lunch, with canap?s and petits fours, for £12.50. 'Everything is made here,' says senior lecturer Stephen Hyde. 'We don't buy in anything pre-prepared, not even the meat. Students spend five weeks in each of the departments of the main kitchens and by the end of their time they have dealt with everything from how to butcher a pig to making fine patisserie.'

The kitchen that serves the restaurant is called Production Kitchen One. A vast warren of rooms, alive with chefs, fills an area half the size of a football pitch. Each is designated for a specific purpose: cold starters and larder preparations, hot meat dishes, a fish prep area, butchery, sauces, patisserie, a bakery and a sugar and marzipan working area. Bob Salt, the lecturer who coordinates the lunchtime melee, is supremely proud of his domain. 'These kitchens are some of the best in London,' he says. 'We've got 120 chefs producing a lunch for 150 people. You won't find that sort of ratio in any other kitchen in the world.'

I donned my chef's whites and made for the main course section. It was hot in there - very hot. The Chavet stoves (the Rolls-Royce of professional cooking equipment) were going full blast and some of the chefs looked as though they were feeling the pressure. 'Seal off that sirloin,' one barked at me. He was perhaps 19. I took two pieces of sirloin, costing the equivalent of an average Londoner's weekly wage, and began to seal them in the spitting fat of a large roasting tray. 'Don't burn them,' he cautioned, 'they're for some pretty important customers.' These turned out to be 15 retired chefs from Claridge's who were coming for a reunion lunch. On the menu was ceviche of tuna with tequila and lime, Dover sole filleted at the table, braised rabbit with prunes, Moroccan lamb with couscous, and every returning plate was a clean one. The food might not have been the best in London, but the result was a triumph of order over chaos.

Had I shared a wok with the next Jamie Oliver? Who knows. Go there yourself, have lunch, find out who cooked it, and wait. Then, at a dinner party in a few years' time, when the host tells you you're eating a recipe by the Next Big Thing, tell them proudly that you ate his food before he was even famous, darling.

Westminster College, Vincent Square, SW1. The £12.50 three-course lunch is served Monday to Friday. To book, call 020 7828 1222, ext 223.