If the chophouse has to close, London and the City will have lost yet more of its character, culture and history
In P.G Wodehouse’s brilliant 1910 novel Psmith in the City, the author – who had himself worked briefly as a junior banker in the Square Mile at the turn of the 20th century – peppers his prose with regular references to eating lunch in one or other of the financial district’s chophouses. Wodehouse didn’t like working for a bank, but he clearly loved the restaurants nearby.
I remember as a schoolboy hearing that people in the City spent their mornings deciding where to go to lunch, then, inevitably, heading up the same alleyway to the same chophouse they were at the day before, and spending the afternoon telling each other how good it was.
And so it was for me. On the Friday of my first full week of work in the City some 40 years ago, I was introduced to the wonderfully atmospheric Simpson’s Tavern, a traditional English chophouse based officially at 38 ½ Cornhill, though in reality in an alleyway called Ball Court just across from the Royal Exchange.
Booking tables was not allowed and the wait could be lengthy, until you became well known as a regular. In typically civilised fashion, though, pints of beer were served while you waited. And it was always worth the wait. This excellent restaurant, established in 1757, immediately became one my favourite haunts.