Trvalý odkaz Pridané používateľom Anonymný (bez overenia) dňa So, 11/30/2024 - 08:34
An invitation to lunch at Caviar Kaspia was, once upon a time, an offer <br>
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you simply didn't refuse. Providing, of course, that the bill was on someone else.<br>
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Because caviar, smeared on blinis or piled high on baked <br>
<br>
potatoes, sure didn't come cheap. There may have been other things on the menu, <br>
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but no one paid them much heed. This was all about lashings <br>
<br>
of the black stuff.<br>
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Caviar Kaspia's signature baked potato and caviar: ‘there are few better dishes on earth…only the price, at just under £150, is ridiculous'<br>
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Caviar Kaspia popped her final tin about two decades back.<br>
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And that site, hidden down a smart Mayfair mews, was taken over by Gavin Rankin (who <br>
<br>
used to be the boss), and transformed into the <br>
<br>
brilliant Bellamy's. It prospers to this day. Kaspia, on the other hand, went quiet.<br>
<br>
Until last year, when she reopened as a members' club in another Mayfair backstreet.<br>
<br>
But a £2,000 a year membership fee proved hard to swallow, meaning <br>
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the doors were opened to the great unwashed.<br>
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Which is how we find ourselves sitting in a rather handsome - albeit near <br>
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empty - dining room, lusciously lavish, under the stern gaze of <br>
<br>
a stern painting of a very stern man. The soft, crepuscular gloom is broken up by the glare of <br>
<br>
table lamps, indecorously bright, while a loud soundtrack of indolent, indeterminate beats throbs in the background.<br>
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The whole place is scented with gilded ennui.<br>
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Our fellow diners are two young South Korean women of <br>
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pale, luminescent beauty, clad in diaphanous couture. They don't speak, <br>
<br>
rather communicate entirely via camera phone. Pose, click, check, filter, post.<br>
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Immaculate waiters hover in the shadows.<br>
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We sip ice-cold vodka, and eat a £77 caviar and smoked-salmon Kaspia croque monsieur that tastes far <br>
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better than it ought to. Next door, a large table fills with a glut <br>
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of the noisily, glossily confident.<br>
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We're looked after by a wonderful French lady of such effervescent charm and charisma <br>
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that had she burst into an impromptu performance of <br>
<br>
‘Willkommen', we would have barely blinked.<br>
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Baked potatoes, skin as crisp as parchment, insides whipped savagely hard with butter and sour <br>
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cream, are a study in tuber art. A cool jet-black splodge of oscietra <br>
<br>
caviar, gently saline, raises them to the sublime.<br>
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Only the price, at just under £150 each, <br>
<br>
is ridiculous. But there are few better dishes on earth.<br>
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I'd eat this every day if I could. But I can't. Obviously.<br>
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That's the problem with caviar. One taste is never enough.<br>
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<b><u>About £200 per head. Caviar Kaspia, 1a Chesterfield Street, London W1; <br>
<br>
caviarkaspialondon.com</u></b><br>
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<u>★★★★✩</u><br>
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<b>My favourite luxury dishes</b><br>
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<br>
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minjiang.co.uk<br>
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An invitation to lunch at