Do I need to tell you that the menu mostly extrapolates on this theme of sophisticated comfort? Bang bang chicken was all crunchable peanuts, the spectral waft of sesame oil and poultry double-cooked into a kind of luscious, hot-sweet jerky. Russell’s Caesar salad (named, touchingly, for the late Russell Norman) was poised, abundant and fittingly brutto ma buono. The feted salmon fish cake, messily dribbled in sorrel-flecked white sauce, remains a coddling revelation: the essence of a perfect fish pie deconstructed and redescribed to the palate like a particularly juicy anecdote. This is the way of the cooking at Arlington. Where chefs across the capital are trying to startle and challenge with knuckle-dustered hits of umami, here, the flavours — whether in an adroitly seasoned puck of chopped steak Americain, spinach recast as a delivery system for bucket loads of cream, or peerless bubble and squeak with a delightfully unnecessary, melting floe of butter — land as softly as a Hungarian goose down pillow.