2 Best Restaurants in Covent Garden, London

Opened by Thomas Rule in 1798, London's oldest restaurant is still perhaps its most beautiful. The epitome of High Victorian design, overflowing with antique portraits, prints, cartoons, busts, and taxidermy, here you can indulge in traditional British fare like jugged hare, steak and kidney pie, or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. For a taste of the 18th century, choose game from the restaurant's High Pennines estate, including roast grouse, mallard, or pheasant. Snag a table in one of the skylit rooms or the spot where the  Victorian-era Prince of Wales had trysts with the famed beauty and actress Lillie Langtry. 

You can feel the history at this 1889 Art Deco--dining powerhouse, which has hosted everyone from Winston Churchill to Marilyn Monroe. Nowadays it caters to business barons, well-heeled West Enders, and wealthy tourists, who come for the Grill's famed table-side silver serving trolley, which might trundle up laden with roast beef or a succulent saddle of lamb. Savoy signatures like twice-baked Arnold Bennett soufflé (with flaked haddock, chives, and Montgomery cheddar sauce) or Peach Melba dessert always impress, as do other timeless classics like Chateaubriand steaks, beef Wellington, and lobster Thermidor.