Simpson's-in-the-Strand

[1] After a modest start in 1828 as a smoking room and soon afterwards as a coffee house, Simpson's achieved a dual fame, around 1850, for its traditional English food, particularly roast meats, and also as the most important venue in Britain for chess in the nineteenth century.

An earlier building on the site was the Fountain Tavern, home to the celebrated literary group the Kit-Cat Club, but this was replaced by Samuel Reiss's Grand Cigar Divan which opened in 1828.

[5] Simpson introduced its tradition of silently wheeling large joints of meat on silver dinner trolleys to each table and carving them in front of guests,[3] initially as a way to serve food without disturbing chess-playing customers' concentration.

The prospectus stressed the great increase in trade caused by the opening of Charing Cross station nearby, and that Cathie would remain as manager.

"[8] In 1914 the death of the head chef at Simpson's was a sufficiently noteworthy event that The Times featured the news under the headline "Thomas Davey and his culinary patriotism".

By 1917 all restaurants except the most basic kind were obliged to have a completely meat-free menu one day a week, though Simpson's still offered luxurious fish, including salmon, sole and turbot.

Thirty years later the elderly George Lyttelton reminisced, "Did you never know the agonising choice put before you in the pre-war Simpson's – saddle of mutton or beef ... both perfect of their kind?

"[11] It is illustrative of the continuing high profile of the establishment that the death of its long-serving doorman in 1934 was covered in the press: "It is estimated that 'Old Matt' opened the doors of over 2,000,000 private cars, taxicabs, and – in Edwardian days – hansom cabs which drew up outside Simpson's.

[13] Early in 1939, before the outbreak of World War II, the Savoy Group, now under Rupert D'Oyly Carte, proposed to open a sister restaurant of Simpson's, near Leicester Square,[14] but this took many years to come to fruition.

[17] After the resolution of that dispute, the next major development in the history of the restaurant was the resuscitation of the pre-war plan to open a sister establishment on the site of Stone's Chop House near Leicester Square.

[21] In 1978 Simpson's celebrated its 150th anniversary with a luncheon consisting of all the items from the earliest recorded menu, starting with turtle soup, going on with roast sirloin of beef and saddle of mutton and ending with boiled syrup roll.

[32] Until 2020, Simpson's dinner specialty was aged Scottish beef on the bone, carved at guests' tables from antique silver-domed trolleys, a tradition that the restaurant maintained for over 150 years.

Other signature dishes included potted shrimps, roast saddle of Welsh lamb and steak and kidney pie, accompanied by Yorkshire pudding.

[33] The restaurant closed in 2020; in 2023, the Savoy auctioned off Simpson's silver trolleys, grand pianos, fireplaces, chandeliers and other furnishings, and plans are afoot to re-open with a new chef.

[35] According to The Times, this alone was sufficient to shift the centre of the chess world away from London permanently, with similar clubs in Vienna and Berlin filling its role.

By 2006, the fourth Staunton Memorial was declared the strongest London all-play-all tournament since 1986, with high calibre grandmasters such as Michael Adams, Ivan Sokolov and Jan Timman competing.

[39] In The Guns of Navarone, David Niven's character leans over his wounded, dying companion and tells him that when he recovers, they will return to London and go straight to Simpson's to have roast beef.

P. G. Wodehouse devoted several paragraphs of Something New to the restaurant, and in his novel Psmith in the City, his two heroes dine there: "Psmith waited for Mike while he changed, and carried him off in a cab to Simpson's, a restaurant which, as he justly observed, offered two great advantages, namely, that you need not dress, and, secondly, that you paid your half-crown, and were then at liberty to eat till you were helpless, if you felt so disposed, without extra charge.

"[41] Simpson's is also featured in Wodehouse's Cocktail Time as the restaurant that one of the characters, Cosmo Wisdom, chooses to lunch at after leaving prison.