The Guinea Grill

Tucked behind Berkeley Square on a Mayfair mews, The Guinea Grill has been serving the same menu of grilled chops, beef Wellington, and award-winning steak-and-kidney pies since 1952. The pub at the front pours Young's; the dining room behind, panelled and low-lit, has the unhurried air of a club that quietly admits anyone who books. The pies have won the British Pie Awards more times than the staff bother to count. The crowd is half Mayfair regulars, half visiting Americans who read about it in a magazine in 1987 and never forgot. This is the British grill room before the steakhouse boom — older, slower, more serious about a Wellington.