Rules Restaurant

I will definitely rate them five star for everything that they provided. Thank you

If you want a good meal this is a good place to come.

Roast beef and very big Yorkshire Pudding along with spinage as a side order filled me up.

Followed by a delicious desert of butterscotch and toffey and served with a nice glass of wine with coffee to follow all for around £80.

The decor is very up market with expensive pictures all over the walls. The other customers also seem to be up market we were chatting to a couple from Scotland in London to see a play as we were.

It is a set two hour sitting that you get. All the tables are booked up in advance. We were told 15 people were waiting just in case there were cancellations.

We were served by a Hungarian waiter whom denied that the horseraddish sause was the best I had ever had but that I should try it pickled!

He told us the restaurant was the oldest in London still in the same place, it has been there for two hundread years.

It is quite a event going to this restaurant and not one likely to be forgotten in a hurry. Well worth a trip.

A great place to eat. Wonderful selection of traditional English fayre! Service good. A bit busy. You can hire private rooms upstairs for a special party where you are served personally. Can run out a bit expensive but worth every penny in my view.

We went to Rules to celebrate a PhD graduation but were very disappointed. After waiting for 45 minutes for our main courses, the waiter said that they will arrive imminently. After another 15 minutes wait I asked him how long it will be, only to be reminded that he already told me. When I said that this was 15 minutes ago, he just walked off. Once the mains arrived, one was rather burnt (meat) and the fish wasn't fully cooked. On top of this experience, they added £15 service charge which I refused to pay. No apology from the manager, no complimentary desserts or drinks to make up for their mistake. For this price level (very expensive), we were very disappointed and can't recommend this restaurant. We certainly won't be eating there again!

Looking back now, to those bleak, monochrome days before I ate the Rules grouse, I suppose I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I had high hopes, of course, mainly thanks to Simon Majumdar and his giddy tour of the kitchens a few weeks back, and was also looking forward to trying the cocktails in the (still relatively new) Rules Bar upstairs. But it seemed like an odd venue - I was worried that, sitting on the reputation as London's Oldest Restaurant and therefore able to suck in enough heritage-starved American tourists and blousy Old Boys to keep the profits ticking over through good times and bad, that Rules didn't actually need to be any good at all. And, it goes without saying, very few of the places that don't need to be good actually, well, are. I was worried it would be staid, overpriced, stuffy, stifling and stressful. In the end, it was none of those things, and in fact turned out to the most wonderful evening I've enjoyed in a very long time.

Events began in the dark-panelled, carpeted luxury of the upstairs bar, and with the creation of a drink called the Golden Negroni. Like all good cocktails, there was that balance of familiar comforting flavours and just a hint of the mysterious. Apparently lurking in it somewhere was a touch of Poire William. It was remarkably easy to drink. While waiting for various members of our party to arrive, I was invited to sit at the bar itself and watch the mixing of my next order up close. Called the Edge, it contained fresh grated horseradish and tasted of cosy evenings in front of a log fire. Perhaps not very seasonal, but delicious nonetheless.

After an hour or so of blissful contentment which passed as if it was five minutes, it was time to move downstairs and take our seats for dinner. With its high ceilings and walls covered in memorabilia and paraphernalia, Rules feels every one of its 211 years old. How nice, though, to be in a restaurant that has gathered its mementos and photographs honestly and gradually over many years, instead of buying them all at once in a bid to invent an illustrious past like so many gastropubs. This is a place with real history, and a confidence in its own reputation as a London dining destination. And we were about to find out why.

My starter was Morecambe Bay potted shrimps, one of my favourite comfort foods at the best of times, but here, thanks to Rules' use of lobster butter to bind the sweet crustaceans together, it took on a new, luxurious identity. I will admit that my knowledge of potted shrimp was previously limited to the little plastic pots you can buy at foodie markets, but even so, these were lovely. And although my dish came on the back of a recommendation from His Maj, the standards of the other starters on our table were equally high - in particularly a gorgeous dressed crab with a perfectly balanced brown meat mix.

And then the grouse. It will give you an idea of how very reasonable the prices are in this restaurant when I tell you that this labour-intensive, hand caught game bird was at only £27.50 the most expensive item on the Rules menu last night. But in this blogger's humble opinion, the experience it delivered was close to priceless. Served with crispy bacon, some duck liver paté on toast and the traditional game chips, the only slightly unusual element was a few sprigs of highland heather protruding from the back of the bird. And yet almost before the first bite of the gorgeously pink, moist meat had reached my lips, I knew this was going to be something special. The smell - oh, lordy, the smell - it was of open countryside, highland moors and healthy living. It was an aroma that did more than simply get the taste buds going, it assaulted my emotions directly, whisking me back to childhood trips to Cumbria and of long walks on hot summer's days. And it was no less affecting in the m