Good British cookery in London has not fared well in its battle against the invasion of good French cookery, and the number of houses which made a speciality of British fare has decreased woefully in the last twenty years. The old Blanchard's and its half-a-crown British dinner is a memory of the past (for the new Blanchard's turned towards the goddess A la), and the "Blue Posts" in Cork Street has been converted into a club. It was curious that the prosperity of this typical old English house depended to a great extent on a German head waiter; for Frank, who had all the best traditions of British cookery at heart, had served under the old Emperor Wilhelm in the great war, and had been wounded by a French bayonet thrust. There were certain rules of the house that were excellent. One was that, no matter what orders you might give beforehand, no fish was ever put near the fire until the man who had ordered it was inside the building, which ensured it going to table cooked to the second; and another was that the steaks, which were a great stand-by of the house, were cut from the mass of beef just in time to be transferred at once to the grill, thus making sure that none of the juices should drain away. But there are still some temples of British cookery left in Cockaigne, and to some of them presently I will direct your steps. II SIMPSON'S IN THE STRAND A wide entrance glowing with light, with Simpson's plain to see, on a wrought-iron sign above it, is in the great block of the Savoy Hotel building in the Strand, for the new Simpson's, though it retains all its old associations and its old manager and its old head cook--Mr Davey, the polite, white-haired little ruler of the roast, who wears a velvet cap, and who for forty-six years has seen the joints turn before the vast open fire in the kitchen--is now under the rule of the great organisation that controls the Savoy. Come into the entrance hall, where you can give up your hat and coat to an attendant; though if you have been accustomed all your life to take them into Simpson's you will still find in the dining-room stands on which to hang them. The hall, with its marble pillars, white panels and groined roof, is light and airy; a staircase runs down from it to the smoking-room, and another one runs up to the dining-rooms upon the first floor. There is a tobacconist's stall in it, and if the door of the expense bar to one side be open you see through it shelves of bottles and flasks. Through the wide door leading into the big dining-room you see white-jacketed waiters moving hither and thither, and white-coated and white-capped carvers pushing the dinner waggons, crowned with big plated covers, before them, and as a background the fine fireplace, with its carved wooden overmantel and its little marble pilasters, and a picture of a knight and lady of Plantagenet days feasting let into the central space.