When we meet for lunch, Adrian Edmondson has spent most of the previous five months in Thailand, filming a TV series based on the Alien films. He is in need of a sense of home, so before he heads to the real thing in Devon that evening, he’s chosen a proxy. We’re at Arlington, Jeremy King’s new revamp of his much-loved former restaurant Le Caprice in London’s St James’s. Edmondson used to come to the original, back in the day, long before King was ousted from his restaurant group and had to rebuild.
“It was awful, what happened to Jeremy,” Edmondson says. “He’s such a good man. I loved every place that he ran, the Wolseley, Fischer’s, but particularly here. All brasseries, not too fussy. I avoid Michelin stars, I always think of it as over-fingered food. I want food to be delicious but I don’t want it to be the centre of attention. I don’t want to admire it.” He orders caesar salad and salmon fishcakes.
