Pursuits: Jeremy King is leery of turning restaurants into global brands

I was in Dubai a couple of weeks ago and the buzz was all about The Ivy.

“Have you been to The Ivy?” people asked me. “Do you know that The Ivy from London has now opened in Dubai?” asked somebody else. And others

added, “You really must go to The Ivy – it’s a fantastic restaurant from London.”

 

   As it turned out, I didn’t have an opportunity to go to the Dubai Ivy. But I do know the London version well. It is a theatrical restaurant of long-standing which had fallen into disrepair when it was bought by Jeremy King and Chris Corbin, two of the hottest restaurateurs in England. Corbin and King turned the restaurant around and made it one of London’s hottest tickets, the sort of place where you were almost guaranteed a sighting of a couple of celebrities every night.

 

   A few months ago, I spent an afternoon with Jeremy King and asked him about the success of his restaurants. Corbin and King never ever opened haute cuisine places and none of their restaurants were in the running for Michelin stars. Their policy was different. They sought to create comfortable but classy places where the warmth of the service was accompanied by simple food, freshly-prepared using the finest ingredients.

 

   Their formula was to take over restaurant brands that had fallen into disrepute and to then turn them around in a manner that drew heavily on the history of the brand. One of their first successes was Le Caprice, a famous Cafe Society brand which had been nearly forgotten by the 1980s when they decided to revive it. They combined stark but glamorous decor (one of the original partners was the designer, Joseph) with modern takes on English food, i.e., fish cakes made with the finest organic salmon, etc.

 

   With the success of Le Caprice (which included among its regulars figures as diverse as Jeffrey Archer and Princess Diana) behind them, Corbin and King went on to re-invent The Ivy as a theatrical restaurant with a smattering of literary and journalistic regulars. Then, they got to work on another restaurant in the theatre district called J Sheekey and made it one of London’s most-loved fish restaurants.

 

   When the restaurants were at their peak, Corbin and King sold out and their empire passed into the hands of entrepreneur Luke Johnson, who eventually sold out to rag-trade billionaire Richard Caring. By then, Corbin and King had returned to the London restaurant scene by opening the massive The Wolseley on Piccadilly. In no time at all, The Wolseley went on to become a 21st century version of Le Caprice, drawing guests away from both The Ivy and, of course, Le Caprice itself.

 

   I asked Jeremy King why his restaurants succeeded. His view was that all his places created a slightly clubby and extremely welcoming ambience. You never felt unwanted even if you were not famous. (This is true. I once went to Le Caprice in the 1980s and though David Bowie was at the next table, all of us got the same level of service as he did.) The important thing about the food, said Jeremy, was that it was good and reliable without necessarily being innovative or outstanding. (Ironically, when Corbin and King did eventually open a restaurant with excellent food – Saint Alban – it was one of their few failures.)

 

   Looking back on the success of the Corbin and King restaurants, I reckon that they represented a uniquely London phenomenon: clubby places serving reliable food. Each city has its unique restaurants. In Paris, they tend to be cafes on the Left Bank, where you can sit out on the sidewalk and watch the world go by. In New York, they used to be fancy lunch places (Le Cirque, Le Cote Basque, Le Grenouille, etc.) where a well-heeled crowd gathered because the waiters knew each high-profile guest’s favourite table and favourite dish. (These days, the old New York restaurants are dying and new buzzy, young places have replaced them.)

 

"But Jeremy believed that the context that made his restaurants so special only existed in London. There was no way you could open Le Caprice or The Ivy in any other city and expect to create a restaurant that was anything like the original."

   Jeremy reckoned that restaurants could not be replicated. It would have been easy for him to have opened a second Le Caprice or a branch of J. Sheekey. But he believed that each restaurant had its own story and its own identity. It could not be a chain like McDonalds or Pizza Hut.

 

   I asked him about the French-American chef, Daniel Boulud, who ran the three-star Restaurant Daniel in New York but also had a flourishing sideline in casual dining places with such places as Bar Boulud and DB Bistro Moderne in various cities. “The thing about Daniel Boulud,” said Jeremy, “is that his restaurants are like a string of faxes. The first fax is quite clear but by the time you’ve got to the fourth, it is muddled and hard to understand.”

 

   Inevitably, this led to a discussion of the branches of the restaurants he once ran. Richard Caring, who owns the old Corbin-King empire, also owns a variety of other prestige brands. He is the new proprietor of the old Mark Birley clubs (Annabel’s, George, etc.) and the Nick Jones properties (Soho House, Cecconi’s, etc.). Caring paid huge prices for these restaurants because he believed they could be replicated all over the world.

 

   To some extent, he has been proved correct. The Soho House brand has been successfully transplanted to the US and Cecconi’s seems like a concept that will travel well. But the old Corbin-King restaurants do not necessarily lend themselves to the Caring formula.

 

   In London, Caring has opened The Ivy Club (members only) above The Ivy restaurant. “I begged them not to do it,” said Jeremy. “The whole point of The Ivy was that it was like a club but there was no membership. Once you open a members-only club, also called The Ivy, all that will happen is that the celebrities will go to the club and everyone who goes to The Ivy restaurant will be made to feel like a second-class citizen.”

 

   Jeremy is also leery of Caring’s attempts to turn the restaurants into global brands. I told him about the New York branch of Le Caprice, which I didn’t think was very good. “How can it be?” he asked. “There is a back-story to Le Caprice. You can’t just open a branch in another city and expect that it will work as well in a strange location.”

 

   But, added Jeremy, worse was yet to come. “Do you know they are planning to open The Ivy in Dubai?” he said with a small shudder.

 

   I knew what he meant but I was not sure that I necessarily agreed with him. Some restaurants are capable of replication – otherwise there would not be so many Nobus all over the world. Nor would Hakkasan work at so many different locations.

 

   But Jeremy believed that the context that made his restaurants so special only existed in London. There was no way you could open Le Caprice or The Ivy in any other city and expect to create a restaurant that was anything like the original.

 

   Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps he’s wrong. On my next trip to Dubai, I will have to find out for myself.