Wearing New & Lingwood Made to measure tailoring, the legendary London restaurateur on dress codes, unruly customers, confidence and what makes a restaurant special.

Jeremy King has only ever thrown one person out of a restaurant for defying a dress code, but it wasn’t for the reasons you might imagine. 

“He called himself a ‘celebrity dentist,’” says King with a wry smile, sat in a booth at his latest winning venture, Simpson’s in The Strand, wearing his own New & Lingwood CUSTOM made-to-measure suit, grenadine silk tie, pressed shirt and a flash of a pocket square. “He was a very pompous man who beckoned me over and started pointing at two guys sat at a nearby table, who happened to be wearing t-shirts. 

“I asked what the problem was, they looked like nice t-shirts. He said that he couldn’t sit next to people wearing t-shirts. Do something about it.

“I said you better go then.”

This anecdote goes some way to describing King’s philosophy. He is a man who feels most at home in smart tailoring, but has little interest in exacting dress codes, seeing himself as an egalitarian who prefers to lead by example, rather than nitpick over sleeve lengths.

“I abhor a dress code, because where do you draw the line? But I do love it when people dress up, and I personally believe that you can never be overdressed, you can only be underdressed.”

“I’m not someone who feels constrained by shirts and ties and so on,” he adds. “I can’t come into the West End unless I’m wearing a suit and a tie. I remember a year or two into owning The Wolseley, I had to come in at the last minute for a minor emergency, so I walked through the door wearing a sweater and slacks. 

At the same time a waiter came out of the bar carrying a whole load of plates, he looked at me and promptly dropped them all on the floor. He’d never seen me not wearing a suit.”

Having turned down a place at Cambridge on the roll of a dice, before a brief sojourn through the world of London finance, King threw himself into the city’s restaurant scene. His first venture as an owner came in 1981 when, then partnered with longtime collaborator Chris Corbin, the pair took over Le Caprice, an art deco hotspot that drew celebrities and scenesters to St James's like well-coiffed moths to a flame. 

An empire of iconic restaurants followed: The Wolseley, Brasserie Zédel, J. Sheekey, The Delaunay and, of course, The Ivy. He became known as a consummate host with an eye for detail, overseeing a democratic dining room (King is an ever-present sight during service). Regulars included Princess Diana (a big Le Caprice fan) and Lucian Freud (who was such a mainstay at The Wolseley that, upon learning of the artist’s death, staff placed a single candle and draped a black table cloth over his regular corner spot) to visitors in t-shirts looking for a post-show dinner and martini. 

It’s an approach that has continued with newer solo ventures like Arlington, The Park and, most recently, Simpson’s in The Strand, King's most ambitious project yet. On a historic stretch of London’s West End, it first opened in 1828 and has been painstakingly restored to comprise two restaurants, The Grand Divan and Romano’s, two bars, Simpson’s Bar and Nellie’s Tavern, and a vast pink-hued ballroom called The Assembly Room. 

“I believe every great restaurant, or any business really, needs to be able to define itself with one sentence, maybe with a comma,” says King. I think Simpson’s is a recreation of one of the great institutions of London, offering an insight into an Edwardian lifestyle… or something like that."

“People lose confidence,” he adds, expanding on how he’s been able to maintain the magic for more than four decades. “You get these homogenised restaurants, homogenised films, homogenised hotels, but people really want individuality. You don’t have to cater to everybody, which isn’t to say you exclude them. 

“It’s like New & Lingwood. If you started putting out a whole range of popular clothing, monogrammed tracksuits and things like that, you might sell them, but you’d lose your individuality. In life and in business you need authority and confidence."

“Restaurants should be catalysts. If we were to come back into Simpson’s this evening and go from table to table, I’d hope to see a date, an anniversary, a celebration, a commiseration, and someone trying to seduce. People use restaurants for all of these things. And the great restaurants facilitate doing all of these things.

“There’s got to be a buzz.

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