Oyster rooms had long been part of the London dining scene. An anonymous passage from Knight’s London, dating back to 1842, records: “Between the dining room and chop house, properly so-called, there are many places such as the oyster rooms where a man can get a dinner by a sort of individual arrangement.”

These oyster rooms were ideal for an informal supper. Bentley’s merely took this popular idea upmarket and very successful it proved. During the twenties and thirties the Bentley’s dedication to high quality seafood, simply served, ensured that 11-15 Swallow Street was regularly packed with a crowd mingling West End theatre-goers and politicians of the day with local aristocrats and fashionable Mayfair flappers.

By 1948, having survived the lean war years, George Hall, then editor of Dining Out, wrote: “Probably the best lobster soup in the world,” and gave the restaurant his top rating. Bentley’s reputation continued to grow, so much so that in the launch edition of a new restaurant guide, Invitations to Dine, in 1956, the editor exclaimed: “To all those interested in fish, the name of Bentley’s has become a household word.” By 1961 the then young restaurant critic Egon Ronay, in a round-up of top eating places in London, wrote: “The two Mr Bentley’s are not only excellent restaurateurs; they are also oyster farmers who sell their delicious produce all over the country.”