Lobster Thermidor Soufflé, Plum Tomato & Basil Galette, Bang Bang Chicken—Arlington’s signature dishes are known throughout the land. But they achieved this status in an unexpected way.
“Most people think a classic is purely defined by the statistics of how often it’s ordered, but that’s not actually the case,” says Jeremy King. At Arlington, it simply means a dish that has been loved passionately over decades. They often operate like scratch-and-sniff stickers, he says, and when you think of them, “You’ll remember a happy time or even an argument, and then the split second that [the dish] runs in your head, you decide if it’s a good idea to go to that restaurant.” But that doesn’t mean one ends up ordering it. “Our eyes might wander,” says Jeremy. “‘Oooh, I haven’t had sweetbreads in a long time.’ The classic has played a role in the process, but there’s no statistical record of it. When you take a dish off the menu and people get upset, that’s when it has achieved classic status. Sometimes, you only discover by removing it just how important it is to you. Once classics become enshrined in a menu, woe is anyone who tries to change it.”
Jeremy’s favourite classic remains the Salmon Fish Cakes with Sorrel Sauce, largely for reasons of nostalgia. “My mother came to the old Caprice for the 18 years that we had it and never ordered anything else,” he says. “For me, that’s the classic classic.”
