Wiltons vs the Ritz: who wins the great grouse race?

‘Bang! Bang! …Thud.’ It’s Friday 12 August, better known to tweedy types as the Glorious Twelfth, and the inaugural grouse on the West Allenheads estate in Northumberland has met its maker. The 26°c temperature yields a slow morning, with the moorland birds reluctant to come out of the shade and the beaters and guns mopping their brows, yearning for elevenses. After the first drive, the bagged game is slung in the back of a Defender and divvied up in the gun room. And now the real challenge begins.

Imagine a sort of Beaujolais Run, except instead of getting Gamay wine from France to Fleet Street, our mission is to dispatch grouse from Hadrian’s Wall to SW1. The destination for ten brace – i.e. 20 birds – is Wiltons on Jermyn Street. For decades, Wiltons and the Ritz, around the corner on Piccadilly, have battled it out in an unofficial competition to see which restaurant receives the first grouse of the season.