Rules Comfort Food in Covent Garden: Pies Since 1798

Rules sits at 35 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London WC2E 7LB, and it has been feeding Londoners since Thomas Rule opened an oyster bar on this lane in 1798. That makes it the oldest restaurant in London by its own count, and the plate that explains the claim is the steak and kidney pudding at £26.25. Since 2 March 2026 the dining room has opened seven days a week, with service starting at 12pm every day.

The house line on the menu page is plain: Rules specialises in classic game cookery, oysters, pies and puddings. For a comfort food search that matters, because the pastry and suet dishes are the core of the kitchen rather than a nostalgic side menu. Steak and kidney pie, steak and kidney pudding and a chicken, leek and mushroom pie all sit at £26.25, and the pudding can be ordered with an oyster tucked inside for £27.95.

The beef comes from British farms and is aged for 28 days, according to the printed menu. That detail shows up again in the rump steak with chips, watercress and whisky peppercorn sauce at £37.25, and in the roast rib of beef for two, an 850g joint priced at £55.00 per person and served with buttered greens, Yorkshire pudding, horseradish cream and red wine jus. Mash, chips or dauphinoise come as sides at £6.95 each.

Start with Poole Rock or West Mersea Rock oysters at £5.75 each, a nod to the oyster bar that Thomas Rule started with. Then go straight to the steak and kidney pudding, which arrives as a dome of suet pastry that breaks open into dark gravy. A side of buttered garden peas with lettuce and crispy Welsh ham, £6.95, cuts through it better than another potato dish does.

Puddings are where Rules leans hardest into nursery comfort. The Rules sticky toffee pudding and the Rules golden syrup sponge are both £11.50, and the apple and sultana crumble with custard is the same price. The menu even suggests a pour for each: a Pedro Ximénez sherry for the toffee pudding, a five-year-old Blandy's Madeira for the syrup sponge. Savoury lovers can finish with Welsh rarebit on sourdough toast for £8.95.

An honest call: skip the fillet of wild seabass at £40.50. It is a perfectly pleasant plate of fish with samphire and new potatoes, but you can eat that anywhere in the West End. The reason to book this particular room is suet, pastry, game and gravy, and the pies cost less than most of the fish. Order the pudding, share a crumble and leave the seabass for another restaurant.

The history page says Rules seats around 90 guests and employs a staff of about 90, which explains why service feels unhurried even when the room is full. The walls are covered with drawings, paintings and cartoons that recall the people who ate here, from Charles Dickens, Thackeray and H.G. Wells to Laurence Olivier, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. The restaurant calls itself an unofficial green room for the entertainment industry.

That green room story still fits the location, since the West End theatres are a few streets away and the lunch and early evening sittings suit anyone with a show to catch. The other regulars are the ones the history page keeps returning to: people who come for game in season, oysters and a proper pudding. Ownership has changed hands rarely: Tom Bell's family sold Rules to John Mayhew in 1984, and today it is owned by Ricky McMenemy, who has worked at the restaurant for 35 years.

There are a few rules worth knowing before you go. The largest table the restaurant will book is six, and it does not accept group bookings or multiple linked reservations for one party. Children are welcome during the day, but after 7pm only children aged ten and over can dine. The dress code is smart casual, and shorts, joggers, tracksuits and sportswear are not considered suitable for the room.

Reservations go through the online booking system on the Rules website, which runs around the clock. Monday to Thursday the last reservation is at 10pm, Friday and Saturday last orders are at 11:30pm, and Sunday follows the weekday pattern with a last reservation at 10pm. If you want a quieter room for a pie and a pudding, a weekday lunch starting at 12pm is the calmest slot before the pre-theatre crowd arrives.

No table free? The Cocktail Bar is the backup. It is a dark wood bar where the team mixes classics the old way, and the house list includes a Rules Bellini at £18.00 and a Black Velvet of champagne and Guinness at £19.95, served in silver tankards. If both are full, Mother Mash runs a second branch on New Row, a few minutes away, where sausages and mash with gravy start at £15.

Maiden Lane is an old path that once linked the convent garden of Westminster Abbey to St Martin's Lane, which is where the name Covent Garden comes from. The Rules history page also points out that the painter J.M.W. Turner was born on this lane. Walk east after lunch and you reach the Covent Garden piazza within a couple of minutes, with St Paul's Church, the actors' church, on its western side.

From the piazza it is a short walk to the Strand and the river, which makes Rules an easy anchor for an afternoon of galleries or a matinee. Charing Cross and Covent Garden stations are both close, and Leicester Square is within walking distance for evening shows. If you are eating before a performance, book a 5pm or 5:30pm table and tell the server your curtain time when you sit down.

Address: 35 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London WC2E 7LB. Service runs Monday to Thursday from 12pm with the last reservation at 10pm, Friday and Saturday from 12pm with last orders at 11:30pm, and Sunday from 12pm with the last reservation at 10pm. Bookings are online, with a maximum of six guests per table and no group bookings.

Budget roughly two courses and a side per person: a pie at £26.25, a pudding at £11.50 and mash at £6.95 comes to £44.70 before drinks and service. Children under ten cannot dine after 7pm, and sportswear is not accepted. For live table availability around Covent Garden on a busy night, open the Karpo APP and compare nearby dining rooms before you walk over.