Guildhall

The restaurant is a stone’s throw from what may well have been the world’s first steakhouse, which went by the unlikely name of Dolly’s. If the story that it was given by Queen Anne to her favourite cook, Dorothy, is to be believed, she would have first stoked up the grill between 1702 and 1714. It was frequented by Fielding, Defoe, Swift, Dryden, Boswell and Pope and received the following tribute in 1846:

“a more celebrated tavern does not exist within the precincts of London. How shall we number the great and celebrated men who have many a time and often visited the venerable gridiron at Dolly’s. And a rare gridiron it is! For upwards of a century that gridiron has never cooled; by night and day from luncheon-bearing morn, through dinner-inviting mid-day, till suppery eve, perpetually are its bars simmering and simpering forth their greaseful admiration of the tender steaks which lie upon them.”

We hope that Hawksmoor Guildhall will one day be worthy of the same kind of praise.