Smith & Wollensky

Smith & Wollensky opened its London flagship in June 2015, the New York steakhouse's first restaurant outside the United States and still its only London site. It occupies the Adelphi Building on the Covent Garden riverside, off the Strand, carrying the green-and-white livery of the 1977 Manhattan original. The kitchen works USDA Prime beef, dry-aged and butchered on site, alongside British and Irish cuts and seafood, and the wine list runs long.

The ground-floor dining room sets the tone: art-deco panelling, green leather banquettes, brass detailing and the racing murals that read as pure New York steakhouse. The Adelphi Bar sits on the lower ground floor. Three private dining rooms sit above the main service. The Theodore Roosevelt Room is the largest, seating fifty with its own private bar and a dedicated bartender; the Churchill Room seats thirty and the Liberty Room twenty, and the two adjoining rooms open into one another for larger parties.

For private events the choice runs from an intimate twenty-cover room to exclusive hire of the whole restaurant, which takes up to two hundred seated or three hundred for a reception. The Strand and Covent Garden setting puts it within walking distance of the theatres and the river, and the events team handles bookings directly.