Simpson’s in the Strand was the sort of London institution where nothing changed without very good reason. Founded in 1828 as a coffee and chess club, the restaurant introduced wheeled silver trolleys so waiters could dispense roast beef and gravy without disturbing the players’ concentration, and kept them long after the chessboards had gone. In the 1860s, to emphasise its focus on British food, Simpson’s rejected the French word “menu” in favour of “bill of fare”, and so it would remain.
Ornate, self-consciously stately and a bit stuffy, it was as English as Charles Dickens, PG Wodehouse and Winston Churchill – all of whom, perhaps unsurprisingly, were devoted patrons. Wodehouse described Simpson’s as “a restful temple of food” where, as one of his characters observed, diners were “at liberty to eat till you were helpless, if you felt so disposed”. Not all diners, however: women were barred from the main dining room until 1984.
