Rules

Rules opened on Maiden Lane in 1798, which makes it the oldest restaurant in London. Thomas Rule began with an oyster bar and the kitchen has cooked traditional British food ever since, built around classic game from the restaurant's own Lartington Estate in Teesdale. The dining room reads like a stage set for two and a quarter centuries of London life: red velvet banquettes piped in gold, wood panelling, a patterned carpet, and walls hung floor to ceiling with oil portraits, antique cartoons, antlers and theatrical prints. Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, Graham Greene, John Betjeman, Henry Irving and Laurence Olivier all ate here, and the room has since appeared in Downton Abbey and the Bond film Spectre.

Upstairs are two wood-panelled private dining rooms, both furnished with red leather chairs and Sketch Victorian artwork. The Graham Greene Room is the larger, hung with letters from the author himself and seating up to eighteen for dinner or twenty-five for a standing reception, with room for drinks before the table is laid. The smaller John Betjeman Room takes up to eight around a single table, named for the poet laureate who helped save the building from demolition at a 1971 Greater London Council inquiry. Both are self-contained and quiet, suited to a hosted dinner with a DJ or a curated playlist rather than a loud party.

The first floor holds the Winter Gardens, the upstairs cocktail bar set among palms and trailing greenery, with plush red seating and a hunting frieze in the room where Edward VII once dined privately with Lillie Langtry. The bar keeps to classic drinks made well and is one of the quieter secrets in the West End. It runs as a walk-in bar rather than a bookable space, but it is the part of Rules that most rewards an evening that starts with a drink before dinner. For private events the building is best read as a heritage restaurant with two genuine private rooms, not a club, and that is exactly its appeal.