Some restaurants define a generation. Simpson’s in the Strand defined several. Since 1828, the Strand address functioned variously as a chess club, a coffee house, and eventually one of London’s most enduringly beloved traditional dining rooms — the kind of place Charles Dickens ate regularly, where Arthur Conan Doyle was a known patron, and where the silver carving trolley became so synonymous with the institution that removing it would have been an act of cultural vandalism.
When the restaurant closed in March 2020 as the pandemic shuttered London’s hospitality industry, there was genuine uncertainty about whether it would ever return. This March, nearly six years later, it has.
The reopening is the work of Jeremy King, the hospitality figure behind Brasserie Zédel, The Wolseley, and Bayswater’s The Park — someone with both the track record and the philosophical commitment to run an institution rather than reinvent it for an audience that didn’t know it existed. King’s approach, which he has been consistent about throughout the planning process, is not renovation for renovation’s sake. “We’re not trying to make it trendier, or faster, or louder,” he said during the build-up. The instinct is preservation and revival, applied to a building and a menu format that earned a Michelin star as far back as 1974.
What has actually been built is more complex than a simple reopening. Simpson’s in the Strand is now effectively a hospitality cluster spread across multiple spaces: The Grand Divan is the main dining room — 110 covers, all-day service, Edwardian features carefully restored, silver carving trolleys back in circulation, and a menu anchored in British classics including roasts, pies and game. Romano’s sits upstairs as a lighter, more casual all-day option. There are two bars — Simpson’s Bar and a late-night dive bar called Nellie’s — and a ballroom for private events that seats several hundred. The full complex has been previewed for select guests, including a BAFTA crowd who saw an early version of the rooms before the public opening.
The timing of Simpson’s revival lands in the middle of what is genuinely one of the most significant months for London restaurant openings in recent years. March 2026 has produced a remarkable cluster of new ventures across every neighbourhood and price point.
In Mayfair, New York institution Carbone opened at 30 Grosvenor Square — the European debut of Major Food Group’s white-tableclothed Italian-American classic, complete with tuxedo-clad service and the vodka rigatoni that made it famous. Carbone’s arrival follows the logic that London’s appetite for elevated Italian-American dining has been growing steadily, and that the Major Food Group’s formula — theatrical service, confident cooking, unashamedly maximalist interiors — translates cleanly to Mayfair’s existing luxury hospitality corridor.
Japanese dining has also had a significant few weeks. MA/NA arrived in Mayfair as a large-format restaurant, cocktail bar, and late-night lounge from the group behind Los Mochis, running dragon-shaped banquettes and a menu including spicy tuna crispy rice, seared wagyu, and king crab salad under executive chef Leo Tanyag.
Separately, A.M. Dupee’s handroll bar — which built a devoted Brixton following over five years for its Californian approach to Japanese technique — relocated and significantly expanded into Mayfair, splitting across two levels with an intimate counter upstairs and a listening bar-inspired lower floor.
The City received MRBL, a new steakhouse in Leadenhall Market’s Victorian-arched setting, built around British grass-fed beef from HG Walter under executive chef Matt Colk, whose previous credits include Aviary Rooftop and The Gun. The pairing of pedigree produce with the Square Mile’s institutional appetite for expense account dining is not an accident. Meanwhile at The Langham on Portland Place, Sale e Pepe Mare opened as a seafood-focused offshoot of the 50-year-old Knightsbridge Italian original — now under the Thesleff Group’s ownership — bringing lobster linguine, whole turbot from the Josper grill, and tableside trolley service to one of London’s grand hotel dining rooms.
Taken as a whole, March 2026 is a reminder that London’s restaurant economy operates at a scale and ambition that few cities globally can match — simultaneously welcoming back a 198-year-old institution and hosting the European debut of a New York icon in the same month, across a dining scene that keeps expanding geographically, stylistically, and in terms of sheer density.