After Four Years of Teasing, Parisian Caviar Masters Decide to Gatekeep Fish Eggs in Mayfair

A Parisian caviar emporium has reopened in London after 20 years away — and it’s not letting anyone in off the street.

Caviar Kaspia is now putting out baked potatoes laden with sturgeon roe, an enviable range of caviars, and it would appear, some rudimentary pastas at 1a Chesterfield Street in Mayfair, but only an invite, and a £2,000 annual deposit, will let diners get inside. The menu is deliberately under wraps, but given its lack of deviation across spaces in Paris, St Tropez, Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, and Dubai, it’s safe to assume tins of roe, the baked potato, and various luxury cured products are on show.

Once granted access, members can luxuriate in some lavishly appointed rooms, with puffy pink furnishings, aquamarine walls, and an ornately finished bar.

The new opening, first mooted in 2018, has gone through not just the impact and delays of the COVID-19 pandemic, but a somewhat exaggerated cultural resurgence of caviar luxury and the attendant bumps of sturgeon roe which were in reality more of a thing in the early 2000s. Caviar has long roamed outside its mother-of-pearl realm of exclusivity, whether on potato chips or fried chicken, and so Kaspia’s attempt to return it to its gilded, extremely expensive surrounds is an interesting move.