Simpson's-in-the-Strand
Coordinates: 51°30′38″N 0°7′15″W / 51.51056°N 0.12083°W
Simpson's-in-the-Strand is one of London's oldest traditional English restaurants. Situated in the Strand, it is part of the Savoy Buildings, which also contain one of the world's most famous hotels, the Savoy.
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. Chess ceased to be a feature after Simpson's was bought by the Savoy Hotel group of companies at the end of the century, but as a purveyor of traditional English food, Simpson's has remained a celebrated dining venue throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. P.G. Wodehouse called it "a restful temple of food".
Since 2005, Simpson's has been run by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts.
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. The establishment soon developed as a coffee house, where gentlemen smoked cigars with their coffee, browsed over the daily journals and newspapers, indulged in lengthy conversations about the politics of the day and played chess, sitting on comfortable divans or sofas. Regular visitors would pay one guinea a year for the use of the facilities and cups of coffee. The daily entrance fee for others was 6d (2½p), or 1/6d (7½p) with coffee and a cigar.
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