Restaurateur Jeremy King found fame and fortune on a roll of the dice
Jeremy King is a devotee of the dice. The restaurateur behind the Wolseley and the Delaunay gave up his place at Cambridge University in the 1970s on a throw of the dice after reading George Cockcroft’s cult novel The Dice Man.
“It was something I did casually about deciding where I should go for dinner,” King said in a speech about his career last year. “[But] then I ended up throwing the dice on my life.”
When the envelope from Cambridge dropped through the letterbox of the family home in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, he threw the dice. The throw said: “If you become a manager within a month of your 21st birthday then you will stay in this business for the rest of your life.”
He had part-time job at Charco’s wine bar, a celebrity haunt off Kings Road in Chelsea. Within a month of his 21st birthday he was appointed the manager.
The dice kept calling, though, sending him off to become a merchant banker. His careers adviser at school had told him he would make a “a really brilliant accountant”. But in reality he found it terribly boring and described working in the City as “hell”.
Then it was back to restaurants, this time at New York-style brasserie Joe Allen in Covent Garden. After work he would hang out at Langan’s Brasserie where he struck up a firm friendship with then general manager Chris Corbin. The pair, then 26 and 28, decided they should open their own restaurant.
Within a year they had taken over Le Caprice in 1981, but almost immediately fell out with their financial backers as they couldn’t agree how to run a modern restaurant. King persuaded his mum and dad to back him instead. “My parents mortgaged their house and we bought the lease. We were young with 100% control. No one could tell us what to do,” he said.
Over
Read more on theguardian.com
