Caviar Kaspia

Caviar Kaspia was founded in Paris in 1927 by Arcady Fixon, who had escaped the Bolshevik revolution and set up a company dedicated to caviar from the Caspian Sea. Two years later he opened a restaurant on rue des Mathurins. The house has stood on place de la Madeleine since, at number 17, with a shop below and a dining room above. Numero, writing in 2023, called it the first caviar restaurant in Paris and put its continued pull down to a dish rather than a menu. The hot potato topped with sturgeon eggs is what people come for, and it has become part of the ritual of Paris Fashion Week. The house sells caviar and smoked fish over the counter for taking away, with vodka beside them and a champagne list for the room upstairs. Bookings are taken by telephone rather than online. Kaspia now lists addresses in New York, Dubai, Sao Paulo, Istanbul and Bodrum alongside Paris. It has also run collaborations with Casablanca and Moda Operandi, which sit oddly beside a fish counter and make sense as brand work. The Paris address remains the one the others are measured against.