Evening Standard
“Getting a table before 10pm is
already a bit of an impossibility,” declared the Standard’s chief restaurant
critic, Jimi Famurewa, smitten after a “bewitching couple of hours” over
lunch with his wife.
Reminding readers that he was too young to have experienced the venue in
its previous Jeremy King incarnation, Jimi described the joint stylishly as
“a meticulous, unabashedly sentimental remastering of Le Caprice, the
canonical celebrity canteen that operated on this same site for almost 40
years”. As a result, you may “feel like you’ve gatecrashed a lavish and
emotional reunion party” amid the assembly of “Burberry-wearing
glamazons, bohemian money and semi-retired flâneurs in their formal
Crocs”.
For all that, Jimi was struck by the way Arlington “reasserts the relevance
and value of suaveness, subtlety and a kind of ineffable, timeless magic
through hospitality”.
Equally impressive was the “sophisticated comfort” food whose flavours
“land as softly as a Hungarian goose down pillow”. The famous old
favourites – bang bang chicken, salmon fishcakes – were all they were
meant to be, while a newcomer, “Russell’s Caesar salad (named,
touchingly, for the late Russell Norman) was poised, abundant and
fittingly brutto ma buono”.
The Times
Giles Coren has already eaten twice at what he called “the most talked-about opening of the year, maybe the decade”, which, given its recency, must qualify him as a regular – which he insists he was at the old Jeremy King/Elton J/Princesses Di & Margaret Le Caprice (and “nobody went in the Luke Johnson/Richard Caring years, darling, literally nobody”).
His verdict? “Brilliant” – “And the food is great. Just great. The sort of stuff that you really can eat every day,” including “the best shepherd’s pie ever”.
Giles’s sign-off: “‘I don’t know if Richard Caring really is planning to open a
Caprice somewhere,’ said absolutely everyone. ‘But when he hears about this place, he is going to be mightily pissed off.’”
Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles tipped up (a little late) at Jeremy King’s comeback restaurant on the site of his former masterpiece, Le Caprice, which no critic has yet dared to malign.
“At first glance, it seems like nothing has changed. Save, that is, for the name,” Tom fudged, struggling in vain to find something new to say about it. Never mind: “all’s as it once was. And all is well in the world.”
The Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell joined the great and the good of the media world to “smooch and hug and nod and wave and relish being there” at Jeremy King’s revivalist venue – “#notlecaprice. Because, lol, of course it is”.
Of course, he said, the actual food is not the point of the place. He then
proceeded, to his credit, to become the first reviewer to puff up his chest
and offer a criticism of the great place, taking aim at “a pair of off-kilter
puds”.
“The treacle tart was a thick gingery, citrussy wedge, not the breadcrumb-
textured beauty it should be, and my guest, who has a house in New
Zealand, insists that the hokey pokey coupe is, in fact, hocus pocus. The
true NZ version is nothing more than vanilla ice cream, pimped up with
nuggets of honeycomb, while at Arlington it comes covered in chocolate
sauce.” At this point, William lost his nerve a little, adding that the dish was
“delightfully, simply, delicious.”
The Guardian
For a brief moment, it seemed that Grace Dent would be the first critic to dare slag off Jeremy King’s renamed revival of Le Caprice. “Spruced-up nursery food for those who find mastication arduous” hardly presaged a good review – “Jerry Hall’s next husband could manage almost the whole menu without putting in teeth.”
But no, it was just the moneyed clientele – “spoilt, grown-up babies” – that she wanted to skewer rather than the cooking or the David Bailey photos on the wall. The fish and chips were a disappointment, but everything else she tasted hit the spot: the Caesar salad was “showstoppingly good”, the bang bang chicken “delicious” and the puddings “truly fantastic, the latter including “Britain’s best crumble – I’ve thought about it hourly ever since”.
Grace Dent - 2024-04-21
