This month, Jeremy King will open the Park, an all-day restaurant in Bayswater. It is the second of three big 2024 openings for the lauded restaurateur, who was behind the heydays of some of London’s most celebrated restaurants such as Le Caprice, the Ivy and the Wolseley.
It follows the launch of Arlington in January, King’s modern reboot of Le Caprice, once a favourite with the stars from Diana, Princess of Wales to Mick Jagger. Later in the year he’ll be reviving another stalwart, Simpson’s on the Strand.
All this after the devastating events of 2022, when King was ousted from Corbin and King, the restaurant empire that also included the Delaunay and Brasserie Zédel, which he had built up over decades with his business partner Chris Corbin. Minor International, the company’s major shareholder, had previously forced the business into administration, then outbid King in an auction in which it sold for more than £60m.
“I’m so delighted he’s done it,” says Trevor Gulliver, a co-founder of St John restaurants. “The whole story is great theatre, with Jeremy coming out the other side triumphant.”
Over the decades, King has garnered respect and accolades in the hospitality industry and he is known for upholding what Martin Kuczmarski, the founder of the Dover restaurant in Mayfair, describes as “old-school hospitality, at very high levels”.
“Jeremy confidently operates in a way that has never gone out of fashion: he always thinks about his customers,” Kuczmarski says. “You walk into one of his restaurants and instantly feel that you’re in the right place, that you’ll be looked after, that no detail hasn’t been thought about for you: proper butter knives, tablecloths and good quality napkins, gorgeous vessels for every condiment.”
The Park is “new world grand cafe”, inspired by large French brasseries, with a more 21st-century design influence than King’s previous openings. If not in keeping with the brand-new development within which it sits, on the corner of Queensway and Bayswater Road, it is an aesthetic that works for the space, marrying that old-school hospitality with new London.
The location is significant, an affluent and leafy patch of the capital that’s arguably underserved for places to go to eat. Kuczmarski, who lives in nearby Maida Vale, observes how the area is changing: “For somewhere so central, it always felt strangely provincial around there. Now it feels newly elegant.” There is a sense of King putting this strip, which connects the West End with Notting Hill, on the map for people who love good food.
Like the space itself, diners can expect food that draws on the old and new world, with classic European flavours and dishes as well as plenty of California-inspired plates – everything from chicken schnitzel to chopped cobb salad and grilled swordfish with sweetcorn and bacon succotash, brunch favourites such as latkes and french toast, and a healthy dose of New York Italian numbers, too. “He can’t go wrong,” says Kucsmarski, who expects generous portions full of big and punchy flavours.
Gulliver says: “It’s the fiercely independent restaurants that make London, and Jeremy is always fiercely independent. He teaches his teams real, lasting skills and he has no interest in the homogeneity of the high street. Places like his need to exist.”
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King has been described as “the restaurateur’s restaurateur”, although this sells him short; he has a knack for creating high-end indie restaurants that also have a broad commercial appeal.
His fellow restaurateur and chef Ravinder Bhogal, who owns Jikoni in Marylebone, agrees. “If Jeremy King builds, they will come,” she says. “It’s wonderful to see the return of Jeremy’s brand of exemplary hospitality in London.”