Simpson's-in-the-Strand: The King is dead, long live the King

Years and years before I knew him, a friend of mine invited some mates over for a party.

They drank till they passed out, as his parents were away and that’s the law for teenagers. One blacked out early, so the others, confident of their moral duties, grabbed the nearest markers and set to work. Artfully, they left his face a constellation of cocks.

Our boy Bratwurst awoke the next day before the others with the horrid realisation he was very, very late. Grabbing a jacket, borrowing a tie, he rushed from the house without so much as a glimpse of his spectacularly schlonged self. So it was he turned up at Simpson’s-In-The-Strand for lunch with his parents.

After double checking the list and conceding that yes, there was a reservation under that name, the maître d' began walking him to his waiting mother and father.

"One second," said Johnson, "I must nip to the loo." He galloped up the stairs to the hall of mirrors that is the Simpson’s urinals. There came an anguished scream, frantic scrubbing with soap and the immediate conversion to Christianity with its plethora of prayers. God, not busy with anything else, put in a miracle.

Back in the hall, our red-faced friend catches the eye of the maître d', who remains wordless and seats this born victim at his parents' table. “I’m afraid,” goes the maître d', savouring a pause, “We’ve just run out of the sausage.”

I love this not only because it’s absolutely true, or even because it allows me to use the only thing I really learned in school – dick metaphors – but because it's affirmation that Simpson's has seen everything. It's somewhere where nothing surprises, where no-one is shaken or caught off guard. Someone ran in with schoolboy wisdom all over his forehead? Hardly new to us, sir. The place has been going since before the Metropolitan Police existed: it has all the stories, it could talk for days.

Trouble is, it acquired a reputation of housing the kind of wealthy geriatrics in search of a “proper Sunday roast” (no bloody foreign muck) and masochistic tourists who take great pleasure in eating scrubbed up canteen fare in order to pronounce English food as dire as ever. Truth be told, Simpson’s only just shuffled to the end of 2016, the walking stick wobbling and the glory days getting hard to believe. Everything creaked, especially the waiters.

Thank God they’ve plugged some money in. The renovation work is subtle, but it’s there: they might have repainted on the cigar stains back on – conservatism with a small 'c' taken the nth degree – but everything else is thoroughly freshened up. The room is better laid out, no longer resembling a boarding school dining hall, has dashes of colour throughout, red leather chairs replacing those awful sets that would have offended your grandma. It is brighter, warmer. It feels like it's actually trying to charm.

Whereas before its aristocratic airs were all crumbling country house, Savile Row suits with holes in, now it feels monied – and somewhere those with money might actually go.

The refurb has spilled into kitchens and onto the Bill Of Fare (the word ‘menu’ remains too exotic). The food is night and day over what it was a year ago: almost incomparable. Whereas before it was solid, stodgy stuff, the ugly oak wood of the food world, now there is some artful thinking in the dishes, things are lighter, more carefully presented. Pairings have an obvious sense of balance. The Dorset crab salad with Granny Smith apple is a marvel in the miniature jenga mold, pale flakes of crab topped with tiny beams of glistening green apple, the freshness crisp and clear but with a touch of heft about it thanks to caramelized walnut.

Beef Wellington can often be a touch dull – oh come on, it’s true – but this one made such an impression I still find myself having visions of it when collapsing through the final minutes on a treadmill. Funny what we see in our times of need: for me, apparently, it is lipstick pink 28-dry-aged beef swaddled in mushrooms and crust. The famous carving trolley was a sad sight on my last trip, tarnished and dull like old medals in a drawer, wheels as wonkey as a supermarket trolley; now it has been buffed up and gleams and its treasure, Scottish beef or Welsh lamb, glows red, its smell rushing up and across the dining room, turning heads just in time for the theatre of carving.

The wine list which matches this is all kinds of better, too: before it was an encyclopedia of French vintages, not much of anything else and so thick and heavy it required a small helicopter to airlift it to the waiting table. Now it is slender, smarter, with wine from the world over. No longer are things being done the old way "because that's how we've always done it." Instead, someone is thinking.

What's happened is not a radical re-imagining of Simpson’s-In-The-Strand. It does not tear up its history, pack away its chess sets and brush aside the history. This is just the new edition. It’s still the same old Simpson’s, but living up to its legacy of Wodehouse, Dickens, Disraeli and all the others. Simpson’s had not been what it should have been for… well, years and years now.

I can't say this somewhere at the cutting edge of food, or even that it's anything close to being modern. But who wants that from this place? The food is good, the wine is good, and the service is, by all accounts, better than it's been in decades. Finally the old Simpson's is back: the King is dead, long live the King. My friend will have to throw another party. I’ll bring the marker pens.

100 Strand, WC2R 0EW, simpsonsinthestrand.co.uk