Wiltons

George William Wilton opened a shellfish stall near the Haymarket in 1742 and the business has been trading, under one name or another, ever since. It became Wiltons Shellfish Mongers and Oyster Rooms, took an alcohol licence in 1840, and moved through King Street, Great Ryder Street, Duke Street and Bury Street before settling at 55 Jermyn Street in 1984. Oysters and game are still the argument here, and the dining room is arranged the way a St James's dining room has always been arranged: high-backed green banquettes in mahogany-framed booths, etched glass, brass, sporting pictures on warm walls.

The Oyster Bar sits at the entrance, eight places at the marble counter and ten at tables opposite, with the shucking done in front of you. Behind it the restaurant runs back through booths and tables to the Green Room, a section divided from the main floor by a glass and wooden partition, which takes forty across six tables and works for a party that wants its own corner without leaving the room. The Jimmy Marks Room is the closed private dining room, named for the head oysterman who worked here from 1942 to 1976; it seats twenty around one table under a glass lantern, with a fireplace, silk lampshades and hunting bronzes.

The whole restaurant can be taken exclusively, at eighty seated or a hundred and fifty standing, and that is the version that interests us: a 275-year-old room in St James's with the doors closed. Menus are written to order and a private-dining team handles the booking. Wiltons publishes no music or entertainment policy, so any DJ-led plan is a conversation to have with the house first.