MAYBE IT'S the Dunkirk spirit, but I've sold more beef
this week than for some time.' These brave words, spoken by Mr Brian Clivaz, manager of Simpson's-in-the- Strand, made me feel quite proud of having acceded to the editor's special assignment, at the height of cow-madness, to try a little beef in London. 'At this time of crisis, go and eat for Britain,' he said. Certainly Simpson's Grand Divan Tavern that Friday lunchtime looked quite unruffled by Dr Creutzfeldt-Jacob's experience and the subsequent draconian measures taken by the European Union. The huge room was about three-quarters full, a television cam- era team was touring the tables, domed trolleys of beef and lamb pushed by chef s- hafted carvers slid noiselessly between tables, and customers were eating with gusto. One felt that while cattle peacefully chewed the cud in Scotland, Simpson's was in the Strand, God was it' his Heaven, and all was well with the world.
After all, Simpson's should know what they are doing: they have been doing it since 1848 and, under master cook Barnaby Godden, are still presenting honest British fare. As well as the a la carte and a dish for each weekday, Simpson's is now offering a set menu at lunchtime and in the early evening of two courses for a remarkably reasonable £10. My oldest friend, with the prudence of a man from the BBC World Service, decided to have it and was well pleased. The only trouble came when he decided he still had room for a pudding and was charged an a la carte additional £4.75 for it. Surely some mistake. Mean- while, the carte offers most starters at £6.75 (a half-dozen native oysters £12.50, smoked salmon a rather excessive £11), main cours- es at £14.50, including vegetables, and lun- cheon dishes of the day at £10.50.
My friend's set lunch fed him a pleasing cold breast of chicken rolled around chopped herbs with a devilled pepper sauce, followed by an ample serving of rather good braised pork loin, with a hint of apple and calvados, accompanied by boiled potatoes, broccoli and rather pallid cauliflower. His pricy pud — from the set menu — was an uninteresting meringue nest with fresh fruit and blackcurrant sauce. I chose for my starter the excellent hard-boiled quails' eggs with smoked had- dock in a cheese sauce, justifiably regarded by Simpson's as a speciality, and then moved on to the sirloin of roast Scotch beef. This, as they say in Michelin, `vaut le voyage': magnificent meat from the Orkneys, the entire sirloin, an invitation to choose between rare and well-done, fat or lean, gravy or not, extended by the carver who is generous with his slices and then asks if that is enough. He certainly earns his traditional tip. The beef was meltingly tender and full of flavour: I felt I was posi- tively acquiring health by eating it. With it came one of those individual, puffed-up Yorkshire puddings that never taste as good as they look, acceptable, if not ideally crisp, roast potatoes, and good spring cab- bage. I ended with an impeccable savoury: Scotch woodcock, a crusty slice of toast covered in creamy scrambled egg, topped by anchovies and capers. Wines are not cheap: a bottle of everyday claret was £21.50. With that, coffee and service, our bill for a highly agreeable lunch came to £79.
London's other traditional server of beef, its oldest restaurant, is Rules in Maiden Lane, established in 1798. So, in a scholarly spirit of compare-and-contrast, I went there too. Tom Bell owned Rules for many years and little changed, but in 1984 his daughter sold it to John Mayhew, then a partner in Brown's, the fast-food place in Oxford. Alas, at Rules things are not what they were. On the day I lunched le patron was eating at the next table, but facing his guest and the street outside, seemingly uninterested in what was happening in his restaurant. Menus are made of shiny lami- nated plastic, staff have computerised order pads, and a single customer can no longer order roast beef; it has to be a 24-oz rib, for two. I did not see any couple order it, though the beef is supplied by Frank Godfrey Ltd from farms around Inverurie. My brother went for game, a house special- ity, and I for steak, kidney and oyster pud- ding, another. This was inauthentic in that the oysters came raw, one atop, the other alongside, in its shell, when they should have been cooked within. But the steak was sound, the kidney in adequate supply, the gravy rich and the suet pud pleasing, if insufficiently thick. Brother's roe deer had been decently grilled medium-rare and came with a plethora of vegetables, as did my steak and kidney: there were three dif- ferent kinds of mash on the table. To start, I ate some pleasant smoked breast of pheasant with pear chutney, and brother a rather stodgy soufflé of smoked haddock, under-tasting of fish. Starters cost around the £5 mark, main courses £12.95. After- wards my splendidly light treacle sponge pudding with nice thin custard (£4.95) was the triumph of the meal, brother's woeful Welsh rarebit — toasted cheese in dainty triangles — its disaster, and they charged £5.95 for it. With two glasses of house white pinot, a bottle of Australian cabernet sauvignon/merlot at £16.95 from a limited list and coffee, the bill came to £83, with service. Rules looks all right at first sight, but you leave feeling it's just another fast- food joint, in quaint surroundings.
Simpson's-in-the-Strand, 100 Strand London WC2; tel: 0171 836 9112.
Rules Restaurant, 35 Maiden Lane, London WC2; tel: 0171 836 5314.
David Fingleton
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