The Times
Giles Coren thoroughly approved of this rebooting of 370-year-old Simpson’s Tavern, a legendary City chop-house, by the accomplished team behind Cloth in Smithfield, who have managed to improve on the original.
“Some people will be furious it’s not simple and honest and Cockney. But most will be delighted,” Giles reckoned.
The beautifully restored interiors and seating are now more comfortable than hitherto, and the whole joint is “jumping like never before”, with “a lovely sense of a big old party just getting started”. And “the food is much better” too, as if in a Dickens revival Scrooge was treated to a dry martini, devils on horseback, and a lovely lemon sole.
Giles Coren - 2026-10-18The Times
Jay Rayner gave his seal of approval to the new incarnation of Simpson’s Tavern, the chophouse opened in 1757, whose new owners have “worked hard to make the old look new, and then really quite old again”, resulting in a list of dishes that “plays to a delicious fantasy of Britishness, one which reads, in places, like some 19th-century grandee has hired French chefs, then asked them to cook a bunch of English dishes”.
It’s the sort of food Jay imagines being consumed by a corpulent bishop in a novel by Anthony Trollope: a “stupidly rich” gratin of smoked haddock, fat mussels and leeks in cheesy béchamel; a “bobby dazzler” of a venison, bacon and prune “pie” (or stew with “old-school, flour-thickened gravy” topped with “gnarly, rough” pastry made in-house); a perfectly trimmed lemon sole in a buttery sauce with potted shrimps; a “massive” Barnsley chop with anchovy butter and a pork chop with sauce Robert.
The wine list is “as comprehensive as you would expect from a business founded by two people from the wine trade”, with some “mildly eccentric”, “very precise” pricing in the upper reaches, such as a 1983 Pétrus for £2,549 and a 1993 Romanée-Conti for £3,641.
Jay Rayner - 2026-10-25
Drinks
Extras
