Simpson's in the Strand returns to the Michelin Guide
Jeremy King's restored 200-year-old institution joins 22 new entries in the Guide's September update, six months after reopening with a roast beef carved tableside.
Simpson's in the Strand has returned to the Michelin Guide, one of 22 restaurants added to the Great Britain & Ireland selection in September 2026, six months after Jeremy King reopened the 200-year-old London institution.
The restaurant closed in 2020, during the pandemic, after housing one of the country's earliest Michelin-starred kitchens; it won its first star in 1974. King, the restaurateur behind The Wolseley and The Delaunay, spent years restoring the Grade II listed building on the Strand before reopening the Grand Divan and its bars on 10 March 2026, with the upstairs restaurant Romano's following later that month.
"This has been a dream of mine for decades," King said of the project, which also revived Simpson's Bar on the first floor, the subterranean late-night bar Nellie's, and a private ballroom, the Assembly Room.
A listing is not a star, but it is the way back onto the map.
A trolley worth the wait
The Grand Divan remains the draw. Waiters wheel a silver-domed trolley table to table and carve the restaurant's Devonshire roast beef, aged 28 days and grass-fed for 33 months, from a silver carving cart more than a century old. The beef comes with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots and gravy, the format that built Simpson's reputation as London's home of the English roast.
Michelin's September update leans heavily on London reopenings and revivals. Chef Spencer Metzger joined restaurateur Jason Atherton to open the French bistro Chez Rose in Mayfair, and Jongho Park opened Sushi Amamoto on the former site of Taku. None of the additions carries a star yet: further star awards wait for the 2027 guide, due early next year.
Six years off the map
Being listed again matters beyond prestige. The Michelin Guide's selection is the working directory inspectors draw on each year, and a listing is the first formal step back onto that circuit after an absence. Simpson's spent six years off it entirely, longer than any other central London dining room of its size.
Whether the Grand Divan earns a star again will not be known until early 2027. For now, King has what he set out to rebuild: a dining room serving the same roast, carved the same way, in a building that looks much as it did before the doors closed.
Other Covent Garden and Strand-adjacent openings have followed a similar logic this year, betting that London diners want the room and the ritual back more than a new concept. Heard's Covent Garden flagship and Cassette, from the Levan team, both opened nearby within the past year.
