King says he has signed a lease for the site with the aim “to recreate a restaurant that for many of our customers, over the years was the one they professed their greatest love for”.
The restaurant will open early next year and is described by King as being “a new version but I hope you will find it reassuringly familiar in how it looks, and what we serve”. It is thought that it won’t bear the Le Caprice name, which is owned by Richard Caring and who is understood to have plans to reopen it in a new site.
Le Caprice was founded by restaurateur and The Ivy founder Mario Gallati in 1947 and became a popular haunt for film stars. In 1981 it was taken over by fashion retailer Joseph Ettedgui and then by King and Corbin the same year. Under their stewardship and also Bolivian-born maître d’ Jesus Adorno the restaurant returned to its past glory.
Le Caprice was later acquired by Richard Caring in 2005 and was closed in 2020 with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time the company said it had new plans for the ‘historic brand’.
Adorno, who King describes as being “integral to Le Caprice’s success over the years” will be returning to the restaurant. Adorno had worked for 38 years at the restaurant before it closed and “was disappointed not to have passed the four decade mark,” according to King.
“I am delighted to tell you that he will now have the opportunity to complete that amazing feat,” he adds.
The Mayfair opening looks likely to precede the opening of The Park, which is due to open in the new Park Modern building near London’s Kensington Palace Gardens next spring.
The Park will be in the grand cafés and brasseries mould that The Wolseley co-founder is known for but will be "very much of the early 21st Century rather than 20th" says King, with a design process that “has been very much influenced by my desire to look at this site through the imaginary eyes of the likes of New York’s Jonathan Waxman, Danny Meyer, Stephen Starr et al – as if this was a restaurant being created for Central Park rather than Hyde Park”.