After several silent years, Simpson’s in the Strand has reopened its doors, and with it returns one of the last temples of classic London hospitality.
Early advertising postcard featuring a painting that hangs in the restaurant.
Credit: Simpson's
Visitors to Simpson's were long greeted by an arresting image: an oil painting depicting a medieval banquet. A crowned king and queen lean toward an enormous pie set upon the table, courtiers gathered about them in anticipation. The scene recalls the old nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence”:
Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing.
Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?
The rhyme itself preserves the memory of a Tudor entertainment known as an entremet—from the French entre mets, meaning “between the dishes”—a moment of spectacle inserted between courses. In such entertainments live birds were hidden inside a pastry shell so that, when the crust was cut before the assembled court, they burst into the hall in a sudden flutter of wings and song. The English table has long delighted in such theatrical interludes. At Simpson’s the moment of surprise arrived not from a pie but from the gentle lifting of a polished silver dome, revealing a magnificent joint of roast beef ready to be carved before the diners — a ritual of dining theatre repeated nightly beneath the chandeliers of the Strand.
The Grand Divan.
Credit: Chronicle
Founded by Samuel Reiss in 1828, Simpson’s began life not as a restaurant but as a smoking room and coffee house called The Grand Divan. It quickly became the capital’s most celebrated chess venue, where Victorian gentlemen gathered beneath gaslight to watch the great masters of the game compete. Among them was Howard Staunton, one of the strongest chess players of the nineteenth century, whose matches drew spectators eager to witness intellectual combat played out across the chequered board.
Epic Chess Match Between Pierre Saint Amant And Howard Staunton (1843).
Credit: Alamy / Album
Chess, however, requires patience and concentration, and players were reluctant to abandon their games in order to dine. In 1848 the proprietor Samuel Reiss partnered with caterer John Simpson, who rebuilt the premises as Simpson’s Tavern and Divan. With advice from the celebrated chef Alexis Soyer, Simpson introduced hearty British fare and an ingenious solution to the problem: rather than summon diners away from their boards, the food would come to them, wheeled through the room on silver-domed trolleys that allowed the games to continue undisturbed.
Dinner is served while the chess games continue uninterrupted in the Divan.
Credit: Simpson's
Large joints of roast beef were placed upon the trolleys and brought directly to the table, where a skilled carver would slice generous portions before the guests. What began as a practical accommodation for chess players soon evolved into a piece of culinary theatre. Beneath polished silver domes rested immense sirloins and saddles of mutton, wheeled ceremoniously through the room before being carved with quiet precision.
Gentlemen's Dining Room, Simpson's in the Strand, London (1906).
Credit: Amoret Tanner
By the Victorian era the carving trolley had become the defining ritual of Simpson’s hospitality. The restaurant’s fame spread across London society, drawing writers, actors, politicians and travellers who came to the Strand to partake in what had become one of the capital’s most reassuringly English experiences.
The Ladies Dining Room located on the first floor of the premises (1906). In 1984 Simpson's dropped its rule forbidding women from using the panelled street-level dining-room at lunchtime.
Credit: Amoret Tanner
The restaurant’s reputation for English beef became so assured that the cartoonist H. M. Bateman immortalised it in a famous 1930s illustration showing the social horror of a diner asking the carver whether the meat was English or foreign.
Cartoon by H. M. Bateman for Simpson's in the Strand (c.1935).
Credit: Simpson's
Among its many admirers was Winston Churchill, who valued Simpson’s for the qualities that defined it — hearty English cooking, unflappable service and the reassuring rituals of the national table. The novelist P. G. Wodehouse captured the atmosphere perfectly when he described the restaurant as “a restful temple of food,” where roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and claret were served with calm authority.
Winston Churchill receives a standing ovation from diners at Simpson's in the Strand while celebrating Victory in Europe Day, May 1945.
Credit: Simpson's
Through the upheavals of the twentieth century Simpson’s endured as one of London’s most recognisable dining rooms. Empires rose and fell, fashions changed, and yet the quiet procession of the carving trolley across the dining room floor remained reassuringly constant.
Advertising postcard illustrating the Veteran Carvers and Superintendents at Simpson's.
Credit: Chronicle
The pandemic years, however, brought an unexpected silence. In 2020 Simpson’s closed its doors, leaving the Strand without one of its most storied institutions. For a time it seemed possible that the restaurant’s long chapter in London’s history had finally reached its conclusion.
The gates of Simpson's in the Strand closed during the pandemic in 2020, bringing an unexpected silence to one of London’s great dining rooms.
Credit: Robert Evans
Yet great institutions, like great cities, have a habit of returning.
Now Simpson’s has reopened under the stewardship of restaurateur Jeremy King, whose career has been devoted to preserving the elegance and ceremony of the great dining rooms of London. The revival promises to restore not only the restaurant itself but the atmosphere that made it famous: the Edwardian interiors, the choreography of attentive service and, most importantly, the return of tableside carving. Every detail has been carefully considered. The glassware, supplied by Richard Brendon, reflects the same commitment to craftsmanship that has long defined the great rituals of the English table.
Jeremy King in the Grand Divan at Simpson's in the Strand, preparing to revive one of London’s most storied dining rooms.
Credit: Simpson's
In an age often captivated by novelty, Simpson’s reminds us of something more enduring. Restaurants such as this are not merely places to eat. They are repositories of cultural memory, stages upon which generations have performed the quiet rituals of civilised life.
The silver dome and carving trolley — the enduring ritual of Simpson's in the Strand and one of the great spectacles of the English table.
Credit: Simpson's
With the carving trolley rolling out once more beneath the chandeliers, it marks more than the reopening of a restaurant. It marks the return of a tradition.