Jeremy King is back where he belongs, in an impeccable three-piece suit, patrolling his new restaurant, which also happens to be his old restaurant and, even more importantly, was once his first restaurant.

Now called Arlington, King ran it with his business partner Chris Corbin as Le Caprice from 1981 to 2000. 

It was bought by billionaire Richard Caring in 2005, who closed it three years ago during the pandemic but kept the name and plans to relaunch it in a London hotel, just to be mischievous.

Still, it is no secret that it was King’s version of Le Caprice that thrilled and delighted London. 

Under the guidance of Corbin & King the feted restaurant in St James’s became a favourite haunt of the fabulously rich, the undeniably famous and the indelibly royal.

Jeremy King (pictured) is back where he belongs, in an impeccable three-piece suit, patrolling his new restaurant, which also happens to be his old restaurant and, even more importantly, was once his first restaurant

Everyone from Lord Archer to Princess Diana (pictured in 1994) were regulars, in this elegant room where rogues and girls from Vogue mingled with film stars, elites and vin ordinaires like me

Now called Arlington, King ran it with his business partner Chris Corbin as Le Caprice from 1981 to 2000

Everyone from Lord Archer to Princess Diana were regulars, in this elegant room where rogues and girls from Vogue mingled with film stars, elites and vin ordinaires like me. On the menu were French-American brasserie dishes, mostly invented by chef Mark Hix. 

They became much loved – and much copied – classics; tomato and basil galettes, crispy duck and watercress salad and, of course, salmon fishcakes which had a pool of sorrel sauce and a secret ingredient – tomato ketchup. Now it is back.

‘I’m feeling appropriately apprehensive,’ says King, sliding his 6ft 5in frame behind a table at Arlington. 

As always, god is in the detail in Jeremy-land, where staff are being trained, glassware is polished and celebrated maitre’d Jesus Adorno is answering phones and gearing up once more to welcome the old regulars.

‘I couldn’t have contemplated doing it without Jesus,’ says King, of the man he first hired back in 1981. ‘I said yes in a second,’ says Adorno, when asked to return.

The very precise ambition is to launch Arlington as a restaurant that is the same but different from Le Caprice. ‘Nostalgia is terrific but one has to guard against pastiche,’ says King.

Indeed, the menu boasts many old favourites – but there will be new additions such as a hokey pokey honeycomb ice cream, a ‘very reasonably priced lobster souffle’ and even something called panacalty, a dish from the North East of corned beef hash made with bacon and onions.

‘Something a bit fun, something to get people talking,’ says King. Geordie hash in St James’s? Only he would dare.

Le Caprice first opened in 1947, with the financial backing of Noel Coward and Ivor Novello. Back then it was a refuge for Theatreland, a fancy French joint rolling out the caviar and soles bonne femme under glinting chandeliers and pink silk walls.

The very precise ambition is to launch Arlington as a restaurant that is the same but different from Le Caprice. ‘Nostalgia is terrific but one has to guard against pastiche,’ says King

As always, god is in the detail in Jeremy-land, where staff are being trained, glassware is polished and celebrated maitre’d Jesus Adorno (left) is answering phones and gearing up once more to welcome the old regulars

Joan Collins attends a private dinner celebrating the 30th anniversary of iconic London restaurant Le Caprice on October 4, 2011 in London

Le Caprice first opened in 1947, with the financial backing of Noel Coward and Ivor Novello. Back then it was a refuge for Theatreland, a fancy French joint rolling out the caviar and soles bonne femme under glinting chandeliers and pink silk walls

Former Soft Cell frontman Marc Almond performs at a private dinner celebrating the 30th anniversary of iconic London restaurant Le Caprice on October 4, 2011

Regulars included Orson Welles, Terence Rattigan and Judy Garland. Elizabeth Taylor came with two husbands, a starter of Eddie Fisher followed by a main course of Richard Burton. 

One New Year’s Eve, while there with Fisher, a waiter accidentally spilt coffee on her Dior gown. The following week her solicitors sent the restaurant a bill for £500 — but it didn’t stop Liz from coming back.

One former manager reported how John Wayne ‘smoked like a Turk’ at his favourite table even when he had cancer, that Bing Crosby was ‘charming, a family man’ and that Princess Margaret and Tony Snowdon were regulars.

By the 1970s, though, there was less of an appetite for formality or choosing from potatoes cooked nine different ways and ducks being carved at the table. One night they even turned away Rudolf Nureyev because his companion was dressed in jeans.

Le Caprice fell out of fashion and closed in January 1975. On the last night, Shelley Winters and Anthony Quayle came to mourn its passing, along with 81-year-old Dame Cicely Courtneidge, a redheaded music-hall star who later appeared as Reg Varney’s mum in On The Buses. 

For the last time she ordered bombe Cicely, an ice cream dessert with a ginger centre created in her honour. ‘Where will we all go now?’ she wailed.

For a brief period the restaurant was reborn as Richoux at the Caprice, a more casual enterprise selling hamburgers and aimed at ‘the miss in jeans and the lady in mink’. Unlike Dame Ciceley’s bombe, it bombed. 

Pippa Middleton at Le Caprice restaurant on April 24, 2013 in London

Le Caprice (interior pictured) was the mothership, the font from which all else flowed. So when the lease came up recently, Jeremy King couldn’t say no

Cilla Black attends the 25th birthday party for restaurant Le Caprice, at The Serpentine Gallery on October 3, 2006

Singer Emeli Sande performs at a private dinner celebrating the 30th anniversary of iconic London restaurant Le Caprice on October 4, 2011

Then the restaurant languished until Corbin & King appeared in 1981 and revitalised it with a glittering new glory.

Soon Jacqueline Bisset, John Schlesinger, Sting and Joanna Lumley were coming to dine on steak hache and crudites with gulls’ eggs. 

Later came Nigella and Madonna while, remarkably, it became the favourite restaurant of both Camilla Parker Bowles and Princess Diana.

Corbin & King went on to launch some of the capital’s greatest restaurants, including the Wolseley, the Delaunay, J Sheekey, Brasserie Zedel, the Colbert, Scott’s in Mayfair and the most successful ever incarnation of the Ivy. 

Yet Le Caprice was the mothership, the font from which all else flowed. So when the lease came up recently, Jeremy King couldn’t say no.

‘It was, to a certain extent, irresistible,’ is how he puts it.

Over the years, the successful Corbin & King restaurants have been taken over by other firms, wrested from their grasp by fair means and foul. One imagines it must have been a bruising experience, but King is sanguine. 

‘I always look forward. My default position is to look for the good. It’s very, very rare that I’m floored by anything,’ he says.

He even manages to be polite about The Ivy Collection, the chain of 40-plus high street restaurants that Richard Caring rolled out after buying the original Ivy, along with Le Caprice.

Donna Air attends a private dinner celebrating the 30th anniversary of iconic London restaurant Le Caprice on October 4, 2011

Richard Caring, Bianca Jagger and Tracey Emin attend a private dinner celebrating the 30th anniversary of iconic London restaurant Le Caprice on October 4, 2011

George Michael poses outside Le Caprice restaurant on February 1, 1995

Corbin & King (pictured in 1985) went on to launch some of the capital’s greatest restaurants, including the Wolseley, the Delaunay, J Sheekey, Brasserie Zedel, the Colbert, Scott’s in Mayfair and the most successful ever incarnation of the Ivy

King (pictured) is in some ways an unlikely restaurateur, a shy man from Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset who was originally destined for the City and lists ‘solitude’ as one of his recreations in Who’s Who

‘They do a good job within their aspirations. I can’t worry about what somebody has done because it’s a different hand and people have a different criteria for success,’ he says. ‘And an awful lot of people really love the Ivies.’

Very generous of him, considering that some of the Corbin & King success story is also a tale of loss, of two men being ousted while others maximised the financial potential of their expertise.

‘We had the best of it,’ said Chris Corbin after they lost the Wolseley and their other restaurants two years ago. 

This followed a bidding war with Minor International, which previously owned 74 per cent of Corbin & King and forced the company into administration to take it over.

Corbin, a cancer survivor, is not joining King in this new Arlington venture, nor King’s reboot of Simpson’s in the Strand and a new restaurant called Park to be opened later this year. ‘I’d do it,’ he told Jeremy, ‘But I just won’t be able to work as hard as you.’

King will be 70 in June and is well-placed to retire to his five-storey home in Belgravia with his lovely second wife, but something drives him on; what? 

He says it is not a sense of revenge nor a feeling of unfinished business, but more the ‘deep pleasure and satisfaction’ he gets from running a successful restaurant.

He is in some ways an unlikely restaurateur, a shy man from Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset who was originally destined for the City and lists ‘solitude’ as one of his recreations in Who’s Who.

Yet he is known for walking through his restaurants each night, immaculate in one of his 100 Timothy Everest suits, saying hello to all his customers, noticing everything.

 ‘I’m a little bit austere and I’m sure some are intimidated. But I actually love people, and that’s why, even though a shy person, I am in the right profession.’

He confesses sometimes to feeling emotional when he looks around his new restaurant – and devoted diner Nigella knows how he feels.

‘The haunt of my 20s and 30s. It was so moving to be back, my heart is full,’ she posted on Instagram, under a photograph of her Arlington martini.

Will Arlington rise to the same giddy heights as its new lobster souffle?

I don’t doubt it for a second.