It’s not possible to say ones favorite restaurant in big cities because such things depend on your cast of mind at a particular moment. But you can say those of which you are most fond and, for me in London, it’s Rules. The place opened on Maiden Lane in 1789 as an oyster bar. The owner, Thomas Rule, was later committed to a psychiatric hospital for the murder of his wife, Isabella, and daughter, Elsie. Then, as now, it has its own estate for game. The restaurant has featured in novels by Graham Green, Dick Francis, Dorothy L Sayers and Evelyn Waugh and Sir John Betjeman, the former British Poet Laureate, complained vociferously to the Greater London Council when Rules was under threat of demolition. The original features in the restaurant and the cocktail bar are carefully maintained. The reason for my fondness will not surprise you.
© 2024 John Oliver
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