Everyone wants to know how Jane and Jeremy Hooper are shaping up in the new business they 'won' as victors in Raymond Blanc's recent BBC2 reality show The Restaurant. And they are going the best way about finding out - by reserving themselves a table at Eight at The Thatch in Thame, which opened on Wednesday of last week. As a result, those dispiriting words "Fully booked, I'm afraid" have been addressed to many a potential punter - myself included.

But The Oxford Times can open doors. Pleading a duty to my readers, I was able to wangle a table for dinner last Friday night. OK, so my cover was blown, but it was clearly going to be anyway the moment we arrived. I had been to the launch party a couple of days before and discovered that the Peach Pub Company's Natalie Langman, whom I knew well from her time as manager of The Fishes in North Hinksey, was working front of house, helping the Hoopers to find their feet. The need for this professional assistance (and that of their mentor M. Blanc) hardly needs explaining when you consider that until the abrupt career change brought about by The Restaurant, Jeremy was cooking canteen grub in the Royal Marines and Jane was a teacher.

Natalie, as it turned out, was there to greet us near the front door of this expertly renovated 16th-century building when Rosemarie and I arrived, promptly at 7.30pm. We had been safely delivered to the bus stop opposite by the Arriva 280 service from Oxford. "Other restaurants have a helipad," said the delightful Jane when we were chatting later. "We have a bus stop."

Public transport, of course, makes perfect sense if one is planning - as I was - to enjoy a modest quantity of wine. And I do mean modest. Not for us the over-indulgence of Oxford University's Assassins club, who last put this restaurant on the map with a drunken rampage there a quarter of a century ago. The resulting court case was told that 19 Assassins - who included supermarket heir James Sainsbury - drank 53 bottles of fine wine.

The place was known as Thatchers in those days. Ten years ago, new owners changed the name to the Old Trout, loudly proclaiming that no insult was intended to a well-known former prime minister. Now acknowledgement of the building's splendid thatch is back in a name that also makes reference to the Hoopers' Eight in the Country (in Frieth, Buckinghamshire), which they were running in The Restaurant.

This was a programme I didn't see. It began while I was on a three-week holiday, and I considered I had lost the plot on return. Had I been a viewer, I have since learned, I would have known better than to order Jeremy's Onion Soup - which featured prominently in the series - as my starter. I did so in the mistaken belief that this would be a healthy option. "Can you ask the kitchen to do it without cheese?" I asked our waiter Peter, thinking this was to be soup in the traditional French style, such as Raymond might supply. When it arrived, however, it turned out to be a dish of an entirely different character - smooth and very, very creamy. It was hardly the thing for someone on a low-cholesterol diet. But what the hell - it tasted wonderful, and I finished it, with two varieties of excellent bread to mop up the final drops.

In fact, none of the five starters fitted my (and many others') dietary regime. There was a poached egg with the celeriac salad, mussels (a potent source of cholesterol), chicken liver parfait (ditto) and twice-baked Roqufort soufflé, with a walnut and balsamic dressing on the accompanying salad. Rosemarie had this last, and thought it first-class.

Main courses, too, are limited to a choice of five on the autumn menu. They range reasonably widely, however - pumpkin and chestnut risotto, medallions of Aberdeenshire fillet, roasted barbary duck breast, Icelandic cod fillet and pork belly.

I had the cod fillet, an example of which is pictured above. There was a generous piece of unskinned fresh loin, lightly cooked to a perfect opalescent whiteness, with big round flakes that fell easily apart. It came with lemon herb butter with capers, creamy mashed potato and green beans that were al dente to the point of being almost raw. Vegetables seem not to be the kitchen's strong point at present. The "buttered carrots" of the menu, which to me suggested the prospect of an attractive bunch of sweet, juicy tiddlers turned out to be a dish of sad-looking, thin round slices from a Bugs Bunny job. I didn't care much for the salad either, which cost another £2.80 and consisted almost entirely of frisée. This is not my favourite salad ingredient since its curly, brittle leaves are ill-equipped to carry the dressing so necessary to offset their chicory-like bitterness.

But all was happiness, I am pleased to say, on the opposite side of the table, where Rosemarie was tackling four big slices of Jimmy Butler's pork belly. Mr Butler is the Norfolk farmer who breeds most flavoursome pigs. Buying from him is in line with the Hoopers' policy of finding the best sources for their foodstuffs. The meat was appealingly presented with a roasted cox's apple and Savoy cabbage but no potatoes (another £2.80 for mash).

Chocolate delice, sticky toffee pudding, tarte Tatin and meringue were all out for me, especially after that soup. So, too, were the five varieties of traditionally made British and French cheeses. I asked if the kitchen could manage some fresh fruit, and was delighted when Natalie appeared with a well-presented dish of chopped pear, melon and a sweet orange fruit which I first took for mango but I think was probably paw-paw. Rosemarie had the meringue with chantilly cream, and rum and chestnut purée. She judged this so-so, but thought there was too little of the purée - an inch-wide blob, all of which she gave to me.

In all, well worth a visit - and there's a good range of bar food served all day if you can't blag yourself a restaurant table.