Inside the Harrods Dining Hall: Is the £37 fish and chips worth it?
Some find the idea of dining in a department store like Harrods akin to a kind of medieval torture, mainly because it requires… spending a decent amount of leisure time in a department store. Shouting over shoppers and the incessant beeping of tills while slurping pho somewhat eradicates the romance, they say. Well, bollocks to that, I say.
I’ll admit I was recently told I am 97 per cent extroverted in a personality test, which might go some way to explaining my feelings, but I do find there is a special kind of alchemy to eating where you shop. Department store restaurants are full of the energy of airports and hotel lobbies, the types of places that breathe life without even trying just by virtue of the amount of people who pass through them.
It’s certainly frenetic at the Harrods Dining Hall, which even if you hate this sort of thing is worth visiting for its sublimely beautiful design. The hall is celebrating a new range of restaurant options, but was originally built in 1902 for market vendors to sell meat and poultry and the design surely makes this the most ornate place to buy a pound of mince in the world. Sitting in here and staring up at the ceiling, you feel as if you’re in the innards of a jewellery box, but simultaneously at one of those imposing and austere thermal baths in Budapest with the interesting tiles up on high walls.
The triple cooked chips perform the most miraculous textural dance, almost chewy on the outside and fluffy-light within.
There are beautiful decorations depicting medieval scenes with animals, and polished tiles so clean and so cream they look almost soft, like you could fall into them and curl up for a nice nap. Everything has been painstakingly cared for and the murals date back to the opening over one hundred years ago. When I go, singers deliver jazz tunes from a podium in the middle of the building. At ground level, the lineup of new chefs on-boarded for the relaunch each work in their share of the dining hall, which is spliced up into lots of little restaurants.
Sushi by MASA is the flagship new opening, a project from three-Michelin-starred chef Masayoshi Takayama, known colloquially as Masa from his lauded New York restaurant. It’s sushi done properly: that means, warm rice, salted and squashed into little rectangles by hand. Atop them, fish that is not supermarket-cold but closer to room temperature to unlock flavour. We eat fatty toro tuna, boisterious mackerel and melt-in-mouth Alaskan wild salmon. The fish was cut and the sushi compiled by a line of men so focused they looked more like they were trying to defuse a bomb than serve dinner. Only at Harrods. There are cocktails with attitude, including the torii Sunset, with 19.5 Hibiki Harmony Japanese whisky, elderflower, yuzushu, mandarin and soda.
One dinner isn’t nearly enough, so we walked the thirty metres to Tom Kerridge’s gaff for the much-mocked £37 fish and chips. The tabloids have been rolling their eyes over its cost. Not to gaslight, but you’d spend that on a night at the pub, wouldn’t you? And Kerridge’s fish and chips does things no other fish and chips can. The triple cooked chips perform the most miraculous textural dance, almost chewy on the outside and fluffy-light within. The batter on the fish tastes like something you really shouldn’t be eating for the sake of your arteries but I was attracted to it like a moth to a blinding light. I better stay away for fear of meeting that creature’s demise. Death by battered fish.
It’s a shame the Harrods Dining Hall all closes up around 9.30pm when the department store shutters for the night, as the energy feels more late night than the venue allows. But wanting to stay longer and indulge in live jazz, battered fish and a chilled glass of Chablis can only be a good thing.
Find out more at the Harrods Dining Hall website
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