‘Look, it’s only interesting if it’s either shit or brilliant,” I said to my editor about… well, every restaurant I’ve ever proposed to review, but on this occasion the most talked about opening of the year, maybe the decade: Arlington.

Not the Arlington. Arlington. It’s not a pub, dear.

Nor is it Le Caprice. Oh heavens, no. It isn’t Le Caprice. It isn’t allowed to be, legally. When Richard Caring bought Le Caprice from Luke Johnson, who had bought it from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who had bought it from someone else, who had bought it from someone else, going all the way back to the 1520s, when the roisterous young Henry VIII used to eat there with Anne Boleyn (whom he used to