Tucked into a velvet banquette behind snowy drapery at Wiltons restaurant in St James’s, London, I felt like Alice tumbling into an Edwardian wonderland.
Just across the room were semi-private booths, resembling enormous four-poster beds, conjuring up historic images of deliciously decadent trysts with showgirls. The deservedly famed oysters arrived, followed by the domed silver trolley trundling into view with Friday’s special, salmon coulibiac.
It was several hours and the cheese trolley and pudding later before I left. It had been such a rare, delightful indulgence that it made me wonder about the restaurant’s origins.
George William Wilton set up his oyster barrow in 1742 on Cockspur Street off Haymarket – so-called for selling hay and straw for London’s livestock. Wilton’s stall was popular with the traders: oysters were cheap, plentiful fare and not the food of the gods, as they are today.
The same was true of Paris, where seafood stalls also thrived. It was only much later, when an appetite grew for sitting down and enjoying a drink alongside food, that the notion of restaurants started forming.
Wilton’s stall remained in Cockspur Street, passing from father to son to nephew until 1805, when it became somewhere to sit and eat, under the new name, Wiltons Shellfish Mongers and Oyster Rooms.
Jason Phillips, Director of Wiltons, suggests it was partly to seek shelter from the British weather that the barrow moved inside. Still, it wasn’t until 1840 that Wiltons became a fully-fledged restaurant after Robert Thomas Wilton applied for a beer and wine licence at Wiltons Oyster Rooms, now on Ryder Street. Since then, Wiltons has moved over a dozen times, always within the St James’s area.
Wiltons was sold in 1942 by Mrs Bessie Leal. She complained to Olaf Hambro (1885-1961), Chairman of Hambros Bank and a regular customer dining there alone, that she was fed up with the war and the bombs.
‘Just put it on the bill,’ said Olaf.
So she did, charging him £1,200 for one restaurant and one Dover sole. The Hambro family still owns Wiltons.
The peripatetic nature of Wiltons allows Rules on Covent Garden’s Maiden Lane to claim the title London’s Oldest Restaurant.
Thomas Rule did not sell oysters on Maiden Lane until around 1798, 56 years after George William Wilton first set out his stall. In 1848, Rule’s son, Benjamin, took a 30-year lease on 36 Maiden Lane, where the restaurant remains.
‘If you define a restaurant by whether it serves alcohol with food, Rules got their liquor licence 44 years after us,’ says Jason. Nevertheless, it’s hard to argue with the solidity of Rules’s bricks-and-mortar history.
Many years ago, I made a film for the BBC in Israel with the late Gerald Kaufman MP. As a thank-you, Gerald took my executive producer, Fiona Stourton, and me to lunch at Rules. Though it was less formal and more affordable than Wiltons, its ornate glass-domed ceiling, scarlet banquettes and magnificent red-and-gold carpet cocooned us in lush comfort and I never forgot it.
‘Gerald was a lovely gentleman,’ remembers Rules’s owner, Ricky McMenemy. Ricky came from Glasgow to be a waiter at Rules in the 1980s and never left. ‘In the ’80s, we looked to Brasserie Lipp or Les Deux Magots as models and crammed in the tables. Over time, we realised we were prioritising quantity over quality. So we slowly began returning comfort to the restaurant’s core.
‘We were always a bit more relaxed than Wiltons, but we share a great sense of welcome. It’s vital we don’t become fossilised or preserved in aspic. Our secret is to move with the times but never throw the baby out with the bathwater.’
Like Ricky, Jason started at Wiltons young – he was just 18 when he began working in the kitchen. He too understands the challenges of keeping up with the times, at the risk of offending regular customers, as when he relaxed the jacket-only policy for men.
‘I don’t expect to see someone coming to a lunch wearing a cardigan – we are a restaurant!’ fumed one customer, vowing never to return.
Nevertheless, a couple of years later, he did, unable to find equivalent culinary quality elsewhere. He remains a regular.
Given that many oldies are in the business of trying to appear younger, it’s delightful to see two elderly institutions battle it out for the oldest-of-them-all title.
‘Sixteen years before Rules was even thought of, we were providing oysters to Queen Victoria,’ says Jason, reminding me that, between 1884 and 1924, Wiltons gained six royal warrants. ‘If Rules wishes to be the oldest restaurant, we’ll be very happy with that, so long as we’re recognised as the oldest oyster-trader.’
Who cares which is the older? The point is, they both remain in safe oldie hands. Ricky and Jason have clocked up around 80 years of loyal service and leadership between them. They are not about to embark on radical culinary adventures, or tear up the carpets in favour of fashionable, antiseptic, cacophonous, industrial minimalism.
They’re so reliably excellent and welcoming that even young people want to go, ensuring that Wiltons and Rules will outlive us all.
Rules, 35 Maiden Lane, London WC2E 7LB, 020 7836 5314, rules.co.uk
Wiltons, 55 Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6LX, 020 7629 9955, wiltons.co.uk
