Game at the grand tables: the British calendar from the Twelfth to winter venison

A calendar kept in the kitchen

British dining still keeps one calendar that owes nothing to fashion. Wild game has seasons fixed by law and by long custom, and the grand dining rooms of London follow them closely. For a visitor between August and February it is the most British thing on any menu in the city, and a dinner built around it carries a sense of occasion that no tasting menu can quite manufacture.

The season opens on a date every London chef knows by heart: the twelfth of August, the Glorious Twelfth, when red grouse shooting begins on the moors of Scotland and the north of England. Game is traditionally not shot on a Sunday, so when the Twelfth falls on one, the opening moves to the Monday and the kitchens wait a day longer.

The months, one at a time

Each month brings its own birds to the menu, and a guest who knows the order can read a wine list and a carte with a little more pleasure.

Grouse, and why it divides a table

Grouse tastes of where it lived. The birds feed on heather, and the meat is dark, rich and faintly bitter in a way that people either love from the first mouthful or never quite forgive. The classic London treatment is plain and confident: the bird roasted whole and served pink on a crouton spread with its own liver, with bread sauce, game chips, watercress and a little gravy, and sometimes rowan or redcurrant jelly on the side.

Order it early in the season if it is new to you, when the birds of the year are milder, and ask your companion before ordering two. Nobody should be alarmed by a stray piece of shot; the waiter will usually warn you, and the correct response is to set it on the side of the plate without comment and carry on talking.

Pies, terrines and the colder months

As the season matures, the kitchens turn from roasting to slow cooking. Older birds go into raised game pies with a hot water crust, served cold with pickles, or into coarse terrines to be eaten with toast and a glass of something red. Hare, which an old Victorian law still forbids anyone to sell between March and July, returns to menus in the colder months, occasionally as jugged hare, the dark and deeply traditional English stew that few kitchens now attempt.

None of this needs a grand dining room. A pie shared at a pub table in a Mayfair mews on a wet November evening can be as memorable as the first grouse of August under a chandelier, and it is a good deal easier to book.

Where to ask, in W1 and St James's

Game belongs to the old rooms. South of Piccadilly, Jermyn Street and its neighbours have served it for generations, and The Game Bird at The Stafford takes its very name from the tradition. Further east, Rules in Covent Garden, which opened in 1798 and calls itself the oldest restaurant in London, sources much of its game from its own estate in the high Pennines. In Mayfair, the grills and the hotel dining rooms tend to add grouse within days of the Twelfth.

Game menus change almost weekly in season, so the reliable course is to ask when you book whether game is on and which birds. The Society names these rooms as addresses only and has no arrangement with any of them.

The bottle to pour beside it

Game asks for wine with some age and some earth in it. Mature red Burgundy is the traditional partner for grouse, its softness taking the edge off the bird's bitterness; northern Rhône syrah, older claret and Nebbiolo all stand up to venison. Partridge and pheasant are gentler and will take a lighter red, or even a rich white. If the list runs to many pages, pass it to someone who enjoys it.

Luna tastes blind for pleasure and will gladly choose, and a grouse dinner in her company becomes a small wine lesson that never once feels like a lesson. She belongs among the curvaceous companions, and she has strong views on oak.

At the table, who knows the season

Bianka cooks seriously and can talk about hare slowly braised for pappardelle, in the Italian manner, long after the plates have gone. Thea spends her free weekends walking in the hills and describes open country in late summer better than any menu does. Laura has ridden since childhood and is at home in the countryside the menu is describing; she suits a guest who would rather talk about an autumn morning in the fields than about work.

A game dinner deserves time. Four hours, booked as a dinner date for £1,800, leave room for a glass beforehand, a long dinner and the walk back to your hotel through St James's or across Berkeley Square. Shorter and longer arrangements appear on the rates page, and Cressida will pass on any dietary preference you mention when you write.