‘An exceptional roast lunch’: Quality Chop House reviewed

The oldest and best chophouse in London was Simpson’s Tavern in Ball Court Alley off Cornhill (since 1757 on that site): Charles Dickens’s favourite chophouse, and mine. Simpson’s was locked out by landlords who impersonate cartoon villains at the end of 2022 for failing to pay pandemic arrears promptly. Simpson’s said they survived world wars, the plague and the Industrial Revolution, but not a landlord who doesn’t understand chops. (This part I paraphrase.)

Court proceedings are ongoing: meanwhile it’s a ruin. It was vandalised in May, as these things tend to be. Now it is empty, and ornamental books tumble out of smashed windows. My ideal reader would consider bidding for the freehold, or Simpson’s will end up selling socks to idiots. It looked like an AI representation of an ideal 18th-century London restaurant and soon that is all we will have to remember it.

There are still chophouses in London – Blacklock and Hawksmoor are the best of the new ones – but none has the charm of Simpson’s. It was bustling and irregular, and the small rooms filled with steam that smelled of custard. I think the kitchen was staffed by friendly Victorian ghosts. I ate there in 2022, but did not file the review before it closed, and could not file it afterwards, because you cannot dine in a ghost restaurant. I remember huge portions of simple flavours: blood and sugar. I ate a Barnsley chop for £14.25 and apple crumble. We were moved outside for coffee, since a table of four had arrived, but with such goodwill – the coffee was a gift from the house – that we didn’t accept that we were outside until the temperature dropped, and at service like that I marvel.

Instead, I go for Sunday lunch at the Quality Chop House in Farringdon, which lives in a tall Victorian terrace with arched windows on the main drag from Blackfriars to King’s Cross. I last came here in 2019 to celebrate its 150th birthday, but since a good chophouse – like a religious maniac or a historian – thinks in centuries, nothing has changed. The interior (a black and white chequered floor, wooden booths, vast windows, its name in mosaic on the street outside) is listed, so it can’t be changed. It was once a Progressive Working-Class Caterer. That, of course, has changed. This is a restaurant for the urban bourgeoisie seeking inauthentic working-class culture, or they wouldn’t be here.

Since 2012, it has been run by Woodhead, who also own Portland, Clipstone and 64 Goodge Street, all careful restaurants. The head chef is the gifted Shaun Searley, and we settle into a spindly table for what is, by any measure, an exceptional roast lunch: excessive, dramatic, and superbly cooked. It is not too bothered about presentation, which I like. On weekdays there is a set menu for £29 for three courses (for instance, Vichyssoise, chicken, and strawberries) but on Sunday it is £55. We eat Cornish mussels with apple and coriander; leek ravioli with squash, pecorino and sage; Luing rump and brisket with horseradish crème fraîche, and sticky Swaledale lamb shoulder with mint sauce, potatoes, carrots, turnips, broccoli and Yorkshire pudding. Pudding is lemon tart, crème caramel and vanilla ice cream. The four-word review would be: we couldn’t walk home.

I recommend this chophouse heartily – how can I not? – but still I think of Simpson’s Tavern, which served breakfast from 7.30 a.m., perhaps the only happiness bankers could know. Wake up with a sausage, said the signage: surely a universal dream.