Rules is fortunate in owning an estate in the High Pennines, “England’s last wilderness”, which supplies training in game management for the staff, exercising its own quality controls and determining how the game is treated. (During the war Tom Bell was an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, and left the running of the restaurant to Charlie, the Head Waiter, who had served Charles Rule for many years.).

They even kept Amis’ dreadful title, “Where Disaster Rules”. . It specialises in classic game cookery, oysters, pies and puddings. The Fred Harvey Company was the owner of the Harvey House chain of restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality industry businesses alongside railroads in the western United States.It was founded in 1876 by Fred Harvey to cater to the growing number of train passengers. It's gone now, and unfortunately so are all the old fixtures and beautiful interior woodwork. Rules is definitely worth a visit. Historical Romance Writers Dishing the Dirt on Research, Labels: Downton Abbey, London Gambit, Rules Restaurant. No sooner said than he opened an oyster bar in Convent Garden. Think of James Bond films — in one of which Rules quite literally appears — though the author has only ever watched the James Bond film in which the eponymous spy is played by Peter Sellers.

A Heyer Moive and a (new to me) Heyer Short Story, Sweep & Specificity - Lynn Nottage's Sweat, Dinner at Rules after the opera at Covent Garden. Think of Woody Allen’s London movies, in which he’s as creepily infatuated with Thames-view apartments and great, sprawling Kent estates as with his muse Scarlett Johansson’s lips. To the surprise and disbelief of his family, his enterprise proved to be not only successful but lasting. Rules is the oldest restaurant in London. Self-seriousness has no place in a fantasy: nostalgia should be, if it’s done correctly, unpretentious. The sibling art of the cinema has contributed its own distinguished list of names including Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel, Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin and John Barrymore. Through it's two hundred year history, it has only been owned by three families. Rarely has a restaurant name encouraged the traditionally-spoofed bad writer’s opening, “the dictionary defines [insert the subject of the essay here],” more nakedly than Rules.The Covent Garden joint has been famously and steadfastly observing very British, very old-school rules about what constitutes an ideal menu since its opening in 1798. The past lives on at Rules and can be seen on the walls all around you – captured in literally hundreds of drawings, paintings and cartoons.

The actors and actresses who have passed through Rules are legion. Rules describes itself as specialising in “game cookery, oysters, pies and puddings,” and it has appeared in books by Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, as well as John Le Carré. It’s a leap in the not-so-dark to suggest he was under the influence; the evidence, based purely on his alcohol-and-writing credo, suggests that he was.

It makes the story come alive and I can dream of going there one day. We're delighted to be seated beside a table of gents who look like escapees from a vintage Punch cartoon. We can sense it and it will not photograph.”. There is a demand for the best in life as we are confronted with so much mediocrity. Rules serves the traditional food of this country at its best – and at affordable prices. Old-style Britishness is necessarily a little ragged ‘round the edges, and a little comic — like James Bond, but played by Peter Sellers. Down the decades Rules has been an unofficial “green room” for the world of entertainment from Henry Irving to Laurence Olivier, and the history of the English stage adorns the walls. You can unsubscribe at any time. RULES RESTAURANT LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity Established in 1798, Rule’s is regarded as London’s oldest restaurant. Although the employment relationship is one which may be terminated by you or the company, with or without cause at any time, the following are some of the actions which are violations of restaurant policies and rules, and which also may result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination.

Rules gives credence to a particular slice of British nostalgia: that of the upper classes, the richest family dynasties, country houses linked by a chug of Rolls Royces. My waiting was really nice about answering my questions and finding a good place to take a picture of me!Betty, thanks for the nice words! just before The Great War, Charles Rule, a descendant of the founder, was thinking of moving to Paris; by sheer coincidence he met Tom Bell, a Briton who owned a Parisian restaurant called the Alhambra, and the two men decided to swap businesses. No true Brit would ever think that spiralised courgette was pasta, even if they ate it willingly and liked it. “Languishing there…since God fell off the bus,” Marina O’Loughlin winks affectionately in The Guardian, “serving doughy, doughty Brit food and carafes of claret to its audience of duffers, grandees and wealthy tourists,” Rules wears the taut, effective maintenance of its old-money grandeur lightly; even as three courses come to forty, maybe fifty, pounds a head.