Simpson’s Bar occupies the first floor of Simpson’s in the Strand, announced by a glazed Art Deco entrance at the top of the stairs. It was conceived as the meeting point of the building — a destination cocktail bar in its own right, and the natural place to gather before dinner in the Grand Divan or Romano’s, or to return afterwards for a final drink.

Where the Grand Divan restores the building’s Edwardian heart, Simpson’s Bar carries its story forward into the early Art Deco years, when the Strand’s theatre crowd was at its most glamorous. The room was drawn from the building’s own records.

Working from archival references, the studio reconstructed the bar’s historic back wall, returning a lost feature to the room as its focal point — less an addition to the building than a recovery from it.

The design keeps the scale deliberately intimate. Brown leather booths gather guests into close conversation; veneered tables are polished to a soft sheen; lighting sits low and warm, drawing the eye toward the illuminated back bar. Timber, leather and lacquer give the room the quality of a club rather than a lounge — somewhere to settle in rather than pass through. Even the drinks belong to the building’s story: the bar’s signature Sharpeners take their names — Book Move, Gambit — from the chess tournaments once played beneath this floor, when Simpson’s was the home of the game in Britain.

The result is a room with two tempos. Before dinner it sharpens the evening — a first drink, a rising sense of occasion, the theatre of the Divan still to come. Afterwards it slows everything down again, holding guests a little longer than they intended to stay.

Simpson’s Bar sits within Studio Shayne Brady’s wider revival of Simpson’s in the Strand, alongside the Grand Divan, Romano’s and Nellie’s — each room distinct in character, all drawn from the building’s own long story.

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