Simpson’s in the Strand is one of London’s historic and iconic dining venues which I like very much, or at least, I did. I’ve been going there for years. Most of my career, in fact. I last went there on the day I retired, with the family. Entering a hallway through a heavy, wooden revolving door from the bustle of the Strand you are greeted by a receptionist who checks you meet Simpson’s dress code and offers to take your hat, coat, gloves and umbrella, well, coat and laptop bag nowadays, to the cloakroom. Upstairs is the Knights Bar where you can meet your guests and some good chaps will welcome you and mix a very fine G&T or cocktail. Simpsons is quintessentially British. Well, English and a bit Scottish, I’ve never found anything Welsh or Irish on the ‘bill of fare’. 
The ground floor Grand Divan Tavern is a wow!-inducing huge room, a striking vision of oak panels, high ceilings, glass chandeliers, intricate plaster mouldings, a huge, always-unlit-in-my-experience fireplace and the celebrated high-backed booths along one side, known as divans, from which the restaurant takes its name, used by the chess players when Simpsons opened in 1828. Great trolleys of roast meats were wheeled around under shiny silver domes so the games would not be disturbed, and they still are today. It had the atmosphere of a gentile gentlemen’s club. Not only does the room look very Grand but it smelled like you would expect an old gentlemen’s club restaurant to smell and its creaky floors and stern-looking, dinner-suited, veteran waiting staff very much look the part. They only allowed ladies to eat in the Grand Divan room in 1984. I used to enjoy taking visiting Houston colleagues to the “restaurant next door” (as it is literally next to the office) because it ticks every box Americans expect from a visit to London. My stock poker-faced joke was that, yes, we all live in houses similar to this one and many wouldn’t really be sure whether I was joking or not.
The table on which sits a huge flower arrangement and the grand piano near the restaurant entrance doubles as the area where one discreetly settles the (always large) bill and it was a shock for me to realise on one early visit that they had a credit card machine. 
Those five-rib roasts in their carts, with their accompanying great vats of gravy, are pushed around by chefs in their whites and high hats, moving quietly from table to table carving generous slices of ‘medium rare’ or ‘well done’ meat and a ladle of gravy onto warmed heavy plates. Crunchy beef dripping roast potatoes, crispy Yorkshire puddings and large dishes of veg were served separately. It was not a restaurant of low hum conversation. The high ceilings allowed one to laugh and talk at top volume without causing offence. 
Many times I’ve seen cabinet ministers eating there with their guests or as guests, including William Hague when he was Conservative Leader, Nick Clegg when Lib Dem leader and more celebrities than we used to see at Shepherds in its hey-day but who we nevertheless promised to keep shtum about. 
I’ve mentioned the roasts but the bill of fare might also include Dover sole, filleted at the table, or rabbit served with turnip broth, mushroom and chickweed (whatever that is), cauliflower porridge with smoked eel, almonds and sultanas, “or would Sir care for the sea bream, served with broccoli, seaweed, mussels, radish and sunflower seeds, or even the wood pigeon with butternut, muscovado and lingoberries? 
Of course, the traditional steak and kidney pudding with beef gravy is delicious today too, Madam!” After a potted shrimp starter (or lobster soup, pea and leek tart, smooth chicken liver pate served with grape chutney and melba toast, or even potted crab, one quickly fills up at what is, after all, only lunch. 
But then you must save room for the puddings! Spotted Dick with hot custard….no, I must desist….you get my drift.
An early breakfast at Simpson’s would set me up for the day. “Do you have you a booking, Sir?”, at 6:45am and then followed a very pleasant start to the day, in my humble but experienced opinion, one of the finest breakfasts to be had in London. Very lovely kedgeree, kippers, smoked salmon eggs Benedict, devilled kidneys, etc. but their pièce de résistance was the Ten Deadly Sins, the plus ultra of the Full English with addition of kidneys, fried bread and baked beans (eggs fried, poached or scrambled). 
Believe me, no-one could eat lunch after one of those. A few years’ ago the Arabian owners of the Savoy Hotel, of which Simpson’s is part, spent untold millions on a refurbishment of the hotel and announced their intention to also refresh Simpson’s. Well, that’s that then, I thought. Bright lights, a celebrity chef, enthusiastic young waiters, barista coffee et al but no, they pretty much did just refurb it. The heavy but sometimes sunken chairs have been replaced with heavy comfortable red leather chairs…. and that’s about it, so far as I know, table of flowers and grand piano and divans left untouched and they still serve rib roasts in the trolleys. The bill of fare is still English. I hear the menu has been modernised. It needed to be but I understand the cooking’s not quite so good, still, that’s progress. I think I’d like to return, one day, except…. they don’t serve breakfast any more. Not that I stay near there or need to take American visitors for early morning breakfast meetings any longer so why concern myself? Because it’s a part of my story. I’ve enjoyed many a business and family breakfast, lunch and dinner at Simpson’s over the last 30 years or so but times change, it seems, even at Simpson’s.
