When Jeremy King was driving along Piccadilly with his wife recently, she noticed he didn’t turn his head to peek into The Wolseley. “You didn’t look,” she said. “No, I didn’t need to.” Nostalgia might be an understandable emotional response for King, given his history as a patron is so intertwined with the cultural fabric of London itself, but as we weave through a warren of building works at Simpson’s in the Strand – his latest and most eagerly anticipated endeavour – there’s no sense it’s in his repertoire at all.
The floorboards here are loose. The only new and shiny things are the copper pipes that will run water and extractions out of the vast kitchen dungeon and onto street level. There are colour swatches painted on the interior walls and illegible builders’ notes scribbled on white tiles. This is a work in progress. The initial building handover was delayed by months, shifting what was originally slated to be a spring 2025 opening to January 2026. But what’s immediately apparent is its scale; filling this storied expanse was always going to take time.
There is the historic ladies’ dining room, currently being converted into a palatial private dining and banquet hall; a cocktail bar and lounge; the accessible and casual diffusion restaurant, overlooking the Strand; an underground speakeasy called Nellie’s (with its own separate street entrance and late-night weekend license); and hallowed ground-floor dining room the Grand Divan. Alongside kitchens are service areas and staff entrances, double-height dumbwaiters to ferry food many floors up, reception desks, cloakrooms, pastry kitchens and cellars: this is King’s biggest restaurant project by some margin.
“I think it has to be my magnum opus,” King concludes. “Where it gets difficult is whether it’s my greatest achievement or not. The Wolseley broke so many records, and the Ivy was such a pure restaurant. This might be my magnum opus … but it won’t be my final opus.”
Alongside the complex overhaul, King has been working on another milestone project: his book. “The restaurateur memoir can often become little more than a list of names,” says King. “I thought, what if I do a book which is more about what I’ve learned.” Between stewarding some of the most important dining rooms in the capital at one time or another (the aforementioned Wolseley and The Ivy, as well as Le Caprice, J Sheekey, The Delaunay, Colbert) and his well-publicised ousting in 2022 from the company he founded with business partner Chris Corbin, he has surely learned a lot.
King dispels any suggestion that Without Reservations: Lessons from a Life in Restaurants offers a philosophy for restaurateurs, deftly deflecting to the legendary Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table and Peppino Leoni’s I Shall Die on the Carpet (although I don’t get the sense that King has any real interest in going out like Tommy Cooper, or slowing down at all).
In the same way Meyer’s books and Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality have found fans in a number of unlikely industries (advertising and public relations, to name a couple), you get the sense King hopes his autobiography will impart wisdom beyond the dining room. Asked if he feels he’s joining a pantheon of great restaurateur authors, he quizzes me, unconvinced: “Are you sure that’s not an oxymoron?”
And finally...
Favourite restaurant in London?
“It’s hard for me to affiliate with a single restaurant, but I’ve always enjoyed Maison Francois and The River Cafe.”
Favourite dish on the new Simpson’s menu?
“I’ve eaten some sublime beef, and we’re bringing back the Simpson’s “deadly sins” breakfast, but I come back to the salmon coulibiac.”
Are you nervous about the new opening?
“It’s daunting at times, but what’s lifted the apprehension is that every service at The Park or Arlington we get two or three enquiries asking, ‘When will Simpson’s open?’ or ‘Will you keep the trolleys?’. Soon enough, and yes we will.”
What would Adrian Gill think of your book?
“He’d be derogatory, I’m sure! He could be cynical, but he was one of the most generous people I knew. Working with him on Breakfast at the Wolseley was, in a way, him saying he had enough faith in me to write my own book.”
Favourite story in the book?
“In many ways, my favourite reflection concerns my daughter Hannah. She came to me near the end of college and said, ‘I’m thinking I should come into the family business.’ I said, ‘Absolutely not – for the very simple reason you used the word “should”. Everything I regret in my life, pretty much, has been something I did because I felt I should.’”
Without Reservation: Lessons From a Life in Restaurants by Jeremy King is published by 4th Estate.
