Still going strong 25 years on

Le Caprice is the sort of restaurant where rich men take their wives to make amends for having taken out their mistress the night before. So joked my wife.

That is particularly true of Sunday brunch, which is very much a family affair. When we pitched up for our sitting (noon-1.30pm) the restaurant was slowly filling up with Bombay brood-mares and their clucking Armani-clad offspring, and bored-looking fathers with their teenage daughters. No beautiful people or celebrities in sight.

The weekend clientele is clearly too rich to worry about being thin. Childless couples,take note. If you want to avoid children, go on a week night.

Le Caprice is still going strong after 25 years because of its consistently high culinary standards. The menu is not original but it has enough modern crowd-pleasing dishes for everyone (steak tartare, eggs Benedict, bagel with smoked salmon).

The matt black Art Deco interior and the aproned staff are reassuringly old-fashioned. Service is brisk and efficient. After our excellent virgin bloody Marys - a good dose of celery salt, but not too much - I ordered a baked artichoke with welsh rabbit and dandelion (£10.75). It felt sinful to be eating something so yum so early on a Sunday when I had barely got out of bed.

My tiger prawns with piri piri were fresh and redolent of the sea. The best was yet to come. The banana sticky toffee pudding and creme fraiche was a revelation. Light but not too cloying, and the sweetness of the toffee was offset by the sourness of the creme fraiche. I would return for that dish alone.

We had no complaints, unlike our neighbours, who claimed they had found glass in their first course and that their red-legged partridge was too pink. Were they just trying it on, we wondered?

When my wife thought she found a caramelised hair in her honeycomb ice cream she beckoned a member of staff. "I assure you that is most unlikely," said the waitress. With that she turned on her heel as if we had personally insulted her. What bravado!

Le Caprice is a restaurant one admires rather than warms to but it's none the worse for that. Women are greeted by a beaming picture of Sir Mick Jagger outside the ladies' loo. Like Sir Mick, Le Caprice is still playing to packed houses and swaggers on with considerable elan.

Le Caprice
Arlington Street, London, SW1A 1RJ