Food: I have been here before

34 is the new restaurant from Richard Caring, the ‘Lex Luthor of Mayfair’, who owns The Ivy, Le Caprice and Annabel’s. In my research, which I undertake before every review — clams tend not to have a back-story — Caring emerges as a character from a Sidney Sheldon novel, or perhaps Lace: ‘Which of you bitches has my entrée?’ He is unpopular with the WASP establishment because A) he is Jewish and B) he is orange. And so the myths, fuelled by Tatler, float. He survived the 2004 tsunami by sheltering behind an atoll. He has a nuclear silo under the J Sheekey Oyster Bar, which is pointed at Pizza Express. His face is made of diamonds. Etcetera.

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Francis Pike

Why Tulip Siddiq had to go

Perhaps Caring’s feuding, which is principally with Robin Birley, who would own Annabel’s had his father not sold it to Caring for £90 million, is exhausting him, because his brain fell out and he called this restaurant 34, after its street number.