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A toast to Wiltons
IT has long been debated which London restaurant is the oldest. Some would have it that it’s Rules, in Covent Garden, WC2, and others Wiltons of St James’s, SW1.
Well, there’s a technicality: Rules got a liquor licence ahead of its gout-inducing competitor, in 1798, which back then was what defined ‘restaurant’ (not something we’d argue with), whereas Wiltons was the first on the scene in the form of a humble oyster barrow in 1742—making it longer in the tooth than America. It later earned a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria
