Sweetings

A 19th-century City of London corner restaurant that serves a reassuringly unadventurous lunch menu of perfectly fine fish and classic comfort food to a clientele of mostly suited and sometimes sexy men who feel very much at home here, pleased that the relatively high prices and rather non-obvious location keep the hoi polloi away. It's practically a best-kept non-secret, and it's a world that's worth penetrating. Decor is period, seemingly untouched by the digital age, and the atmosphere is anything but stuffy. Opened on this spot in 1889, already with 59 Victorian years' experience behind it, at previous locations, starting in Lad Lane in Islington, where it was called John S Sweetings, Fish and Oyster Merchant. Offal guru Fergus Henderson (of St John fame) has been known to eat here. Tube stations: Bank and Mansion House.