When it comes to meeting clients to pitch, or follow up on, a proposal, you can’t leave anything to chance. You’re only as good as your last pint, as the saying goes – or should go.

If you’re doing business in London’s west end, we have three suggestions for you where you can be guaranteed of impressing your client, whether it’s strictly drinks, a bar snack, or a proper Friday lunch that might take up most of the afternoon.

Two of them have just been beautifully refurbished and reopened. Before we get to that pair, let’s start with one that has been around for almost 500 years.

The Guinea Grill

The coming year sees the 500th anniversary of an inn standing on the Guinea’s premises in a quiet alleyway off Berkeley Square.

An institution among the hedgies who populate the area, it’s been serving up superb beef, supplied by Godfrey’s, London’s finest butcher, and cooked on an open grill, for more than 70 years. Not only is the quality beyond compare, but the quantities are also uber-generous as well.

There’s more than a touch of the gentlemen’s club about the elegant wood-panelled dining room, while the bar in front looks more like a rural local with wooden booths and benches.

And rare is the diner who doesn’t pause for a pint of Guinness on the way into lunch – it’s been nominated by the esteemed Guinness Guru as the finest in London.

There’s even a video of former Guinea landlord Oisin Rogers showing said sage how to pour the perfect pint of the black stuff and what to look for when someone serves you one wherever you may be.

No time for a full lunch? No problem; the bar menu should do you fine with a selection of pies, sausage rolls and scotch eggs.

• Best restaurant choice: any of the steaks or the full mixed grill.
• Best bar choice: any pie.
• Pro tip: go easy on the starters to avoid overload.

The Guinea Grill is at 30 Bruton Pl, London W1J 6NL

The Barley Mow

Just 498 years younger, the Barley Mow off Oxford Street towards Grosvenor Square does a connection with the Guinea. It’s managed by Rogers’ daughter Lara, who cut her teeth at her father’s gaff and is running the new place at the tender age of 25 with the aplomb of one who’s been doing it for decades.

The first thing you notice is the elegance of both the bar and the upstairs restaurant. The paint may be barely dry on the whole place, but they both look as if they have been around for years. Barely open for three months, It’s an instant classic with light flooding through the picture windows on both floors.

The restaurant menu is extensive and classically British with seafood-leaning starters melding into mains including such as Dover sole, wild sea bass and a daily carvery. You’ll find a selection of these served at the bar downstairs along with some lighter options. The wine list and selection of beers are both extensive while the bar staff will whip you a more than decent negroni on demand.

• Best restaurant choice: Native breed beef pie, mash and parsley sauce – deep-fried oysters are an optional extra.
• Best bar choice: Haggis scotch egg with whisky mayonnaise, washed down with a Stiegl Austrian lager.
• Pro tip: Take the Elizabeth line to get there and walk down St Anselm’s Place to avoid the Hogarthian madness of Oxford Street.

The Barley Mow can be found at 82 Duke St, London W1K 6JG

The Audley Public House

You may not know this but there are actually two bits to Mayfair.

You have the posh bit around Berkeley Square and the really posh area west of there towards the racetrack that is Park Lane.

Walk west down Mount Street past the queues for the Goyard handbag shop, The Connaught hotel and Scott’s seafood restaurant – playground of the uber-rich for decades – and you’ll be at the stunning Audley Public house before you know it.

Opening a week or two after the Barley Mow, there’s a lot similar here in the way that the furniture and the bar have been styled.

The big difference? The Audley has been reopened under the auspices of art dealers Hauser & Wirth and from the stunning bar ceiling to the Matisse and Freud works upstairs, you’re feasting before you’ve ordered anything.

But you’re actually here to eat and drink and not just gawp at the art, aren’t you? In which case, it’s pretty much the same playbook as the Barley Mow – that is English pub favourites downstairs and upstairs (actually called the Mount Street restaurant) the culinary map of the British Isles is spread out before you, from Portland crab to Highland venison.

As a bonus, there’s that long-forgotten classic English course, savouries, including Gentleman’s relish, cucumber and toast to revive the palate after the mains.

• Best restaurant choice: Omelette Arnold Benett.
• Best bar choice: Butler’s bangers. Still peckish? Get some Tayto Roast Chicken crisps down you.
• Pro tip: If drinking, avoid the temptation of visiting the nearby expensive shops after you leave.

The Audley Public House and Mount Street Restaurant are at 41-43 Mount St, London W1K 2RX

Real Life is a new column from Citywire Amplify delivering recommendations of where to eat, drink and stay, and how to travel on business. Any recommendations? Let us know at amplify@citywire.co.uk