An invitation to lunch at Caviar Kaspia was, once upon a time,<br>
<br>
an offer you simply didn't refuse. Providing, of course, that the <br>
<br>
bill was on someone else. Because caviar, smeared on blinis or piled high on baked potatoes,<br>
<br>
sure didn't come cheap. There may have been other things on the menu, <br>
<br>
but no one paid them much heed. This was all about lashings of the black stuff.<br>
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Caviar Kaspia's signature baked potato and caviar: ‘there are <br>
<br>
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>
<br>
And that site, hidden down a smart Mayfair mews, was taken over <br>
<br>
by Gavin Rankin (who used to be the boss), and transformed into the brilliant <br>
<br>
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 <br>
<br>
backstreet. But a £2,000 a year membership fee proved hard to swallow, meaning the <br>
<br>
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 empty <br>
<br>
- 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 <br>
<br>
glare of table lamps, indecorously bright, <br>
<br>
while a loud soundtrack of indolent, indeterminate beats throbs in the <br>
<br>
background. 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 beauty, clad in diaphanous couture.<br>
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They don't speak, rather communicate entirely via camera phone.<br>
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Pose, click, check, filter, post. Immaculate waiters hover <br>
<br>
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 <br>
<br>
tastes far better than it ought to. Next door, a large table fills with a glut of the <br>
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noisily, glossily confident.<br>
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We're looked after by a wonderful French <br>
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lady of such effervescent charm and charisma that had she burst into an impromptu performance of ‘Willkommen', we would have barely blinked.<br>
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<br>
Baked potatoes, skin as crisp as parchment, insides whipped savagely hard with butter and sour cream, <br>
<br>
are a study in tuber art. A cool jet-black splodge of oscietra caviar, gently saline, raises them to the sublime.<br>
<br>
Only the price, at just under £150 each, is ridiculous.<br>
<br>
But there are few better dishes on earth. I'd eat this every day if <br>
<br>
I could. But I can't. Obviously. That's the problem with caviar.<br>
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One taste is never enough.<br>
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About £200 per head. Caviar Kaspia, 1a Chesterfield <br>
<br>
Street, London W1; caviarkaspialondon.com<br>
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★★★★✩<br>
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An invitation to lunch at