An invitation to lunch at Caviar Kaspia was, once upon a time, an offer you simply didn't refuse.<br>
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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 potatoes, sure didn't come cheap.<br>
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There may have been other things on the menu, but no one paid them <br>
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much heed. This was all about lashings of the black stuff.<br>
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Caviar Kaspia's signature baked potato and caviar:<br>
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‘there are few better dishes on earth…only the price, at just under <br>
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£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 <br>
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taken over by Gavin Rankin (who used to be the boss), and <br>
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transformed into the brilliant Bellamy's. It prospers to <br>
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this day. Kaspia, on the other hand, went quiet. Until last year, when she reopened as a members' club <br>
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in another Mayfair backstreet. But a £2,000 a year <br>
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membership fee proved hard to swallow, meaning 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 <br>
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near empty - dining room, lusciously lavish, under the stern gaze of a stern painting of a very stern man. The soft, crepuscular gloom is broken up by the glare of table lamps, indecorously bright,<br>
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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 pale, luminescent <br>
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beauty, clad in diaphanous couture. They don't speak, rather communicate entirely via camera phone.<br>
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Pose, click, check, filter, post. 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 better than it ought to.<br>
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Next door, a large table fills with a glut 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 that had she burst into an impromptu performance of <br>
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‘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 caviar, gently saline, raises them to the <br>
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sublime. Only the price, at just under £150 each,<br>
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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.<br>
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Obviously. That's the problem with caviar. One taste <br>
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is never enough.<br>
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About £200 per head. Caviar Kaspia, 1a Chesterfield Street, London W1; <br>
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caviarkaspialondon.com<br>
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★★★★✩<br>
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My favourite luxury dishes<br>
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Piscine perfection comes at an eye-watering £420 per person, sans booze.<br>
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dorchestercollection.com<br>
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Min Jiang<br>
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The dim sum is some of the best in town. But don't miss the wood-fired Beijing duck (£98) - crisp skin first, then two servings <br>
<br>
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minjiang.co.uk<br>
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Have a look at my blog post; จัดดอกไม้หางนกยูง - <br>
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https://Anekdotes.ru/user/HassanLasley/
An invitation to lunch at