Knights Bar at Simpson's-in-the-Strand

More Wallis than Homer, crusty veteran Simpson’s-in-the-Strand harks back to the days of Empire & brown Windsor soup – over the centuries, it has hosted everyone from Disraeli & Gladstone to Charles Dickens & Vincent Van Gogh. Referencing the institution’s early days as a chess club, Knight’s art-deco, chequerboard-inspired cocktail bar is as quintessentially English as prawn cocktail – the sort of comforting sustenance the chef will rustle up to accompany bracing martinis & snifters for the dickie-bow & evening-bag set. In such preserved-in-aspic surroundings, go for ‘gin & it’ (the late Queen Mum’s favourite), sidecar, aviation, bee’s knees, prairie oyster or ‘gin rickey’ (a gin/lime/club soda highball). Unlike its sibling the Savoy, Simpson’s has heroically resisted refurbishment – making Knight’s’ clubby antiquity ideal for a pre-theatre sharpener.