Food type Seafood Country United Kingdom | City London, EC4 Reservations No | |
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Established 1889; 128 years ago (1889) Street address 39 Queen Victoria Street | ||
Sweetings is a restaurant at 39 Queen Victoria Street in the City of London that specialises in traditional British seafood. It has been based at its present location since 1889. It is only open on weekday lunchtimes, and does not take reservations.
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History
Sweetings's first incarnation was as John S. Sweetings, Fish and Oyster Merchant in Lad Lane, Islington, in 1830. The Lad Lane shop continued to supply fish and game to hotels and restaurants The restaurant later occupied sites at 159 Cheapside and 17 Milk Street, advertised as "Very Superior Oyster Rooms". Fodor's wrote that "little seems to have changed at this time warp since the height of the British Empire". The French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec patronised Sweetings in the 19th century. Sweetings has been owned by Richard Barfoot since 2001 who bought it from the widow of Graham Needham. Needham had owned it since 1980. Barfoot also supplies Sweeting's sustainably sourced seafood. According to Barfoot, Needham told him that the gangster George Francis once offered him £1,000,000 from a suitcase for Sweetings but Needham said, "I don't want to know and if you are going to trouble me like that you can get out now". Sweetings is located in the Grade II listed Albert Buildings at 39–53 Queen Victoria Street, built in 1871.
Reviews
Condé Nast Traveler described Sweetings as a
A seafood institution in the City...You won't find the most sophisticated cooking here, but the fish is very fresh and the pleasure is in feeling that you have stumbled on a slice of history. The waiters and waitresses are trapped behind wooden counters and serve only the eight or so customers in front of them. There is an etiquette about when you can talk to them but, after countless visits, I can't work it out.
Tom Parker Bowles reviewed Sweetings for The Mail on Sunday in 2013 and wrote of the decor that "the walls resemble the flat of an upper middle-class bachelor: spy prints, team photos and middling still lifes of Stilton" and the clientele were "contemporary City swells, supping Black Velvet from pewter tankards and guzzling oysters". Parker Bowles was less enthusiastic about the cooking but concluded that "Because despite the hit-and-miss nature of the food (and my advice is to stick to the shellfish), this is one of London's greatest restaurants. You don't come for the food. You come for Sweetings".
Chef Fergus Henderson proposed to his wife, Margot, at Sweetings and wrote that their Black Velvet (Guinness and champagne cocktail) "puts you in the mood for romance". The black velvet was also praised by designer Phillipe Starck who felt that upon drinking it from a tankard "you are really in England".