London is hot, hot, hot these days -- full of exciting new eateries, pulsating bars and great cafes. But you didn't travel to the British capital to eat French food, drink Australian lager or sip espresso in a New York-style coffeehouse. Here, instead, are a ++ few spots that conjure visions of Merry Olde England.
Rules is London's oldest restaurant, having opened in 1798. A short walk from Covent Garden, it's the place to go -- especially in the fall for game dishes including partridge, rabbit, deer and pheasant. There's also fish and pasta.
The room is decorated with knickknacks and paintings collected over 300 years, and there are liveried waiters and real ale served in pewter mugs.
Simpsons-in-the-Strand is another time machine. Beef is served from a silver trolley in a wood-paneled room with a 19th-century painting of "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" on a wall. Great duck and lamb, too. The top-off is a glass of port and a Havana cigar.
Simpsons recently added breakfast. Try the Ten Deadly Sins -- a collection of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, calf's liver, calf's kidneys and other items.
Head to the Notting Hill area for a bit of working-class English life: a plate of fish and chips.
Geales, with its cozy room, blackboard menu and nice selection of beers, was for decades the undisputed king of the fish-and-chips scene. Lately, though, a lot of fish-and-chips fans have been heading over to Costas Fish Restaurant, owned by a Greek immigrant family. The fish is outstanding, and there are more alternatives than at Geales -- such as the excellent calamari.
Among London's 4,000 pubs:
The Citte of York is the biggest pub with the longest bar in the city. Everywhere are little wood-paneled niches, called "cozies,"
for one-on-one conversations.
Most of the newspapers have fled Fleet Street, but you can still get the feel of the "street of ink" at Ye Olde Cock Tavern. Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson and Samuel Pepys drank at this Victorian gem. Stop in if you find yourself near St. Paul's Cathedral.
At the Eagle, you can revel in a bit of childhood nostalgia. It was immortalized in a verse of the nursery rhyme "Pop Goes the Weasal" -- "Up and down the City Road/In and out of the Eagle "
Karl Marx used to hang out in a corner of the Museum Tavern, just across the street from the British Museum. The pub has one of the best "pub grub" lunches of such traditional favorites as bangers and mash (sausage and potatoes) and shepherd's pie.
When you go
Rules, 35 Maiden Lane. Dinner for two, $100; excellent-value lunches
Simpsons-in-the-Strand, 100 the Strand. Dinner for two, $120; less expensive lunches;
Geales, 2 Farmer St. Lunch for two, $25
Costas Fish Restaurant, 18 Hillgate St. Lunch for two, $20
Citte of York, 22-23 High Holborn.
Ye Olde Cock Tavern, 22 Fleet St.
Eagle, 2 Shepherdess Walk.
3' Museum Tavern, 49 Great Russell St.
Pub Date: 6/01/97
