(Bloomberg) -- Over its 175 years, Harrods has specialized in retail theater. It boasted the UK’s first escalator, sold an alligator to Nöel Coward and hosted Michael Jackson’s annual Christmas shopping excursions.
In the ensuing years, that bigger-is-better approach has led Harrods to turbocharge its famous Food Halls, making them arguably one of Europe’s finest epicurean shopping stops. The luxury department store has added a string of branded cafes (Prada Caffè and Tiffany Blue Box Café) and dining rooms from celebrated chefs like the Swedish Bjorn Frantzen and New York City’s Masa Takayama. More than 10 million visitors descend on the store annually, and it’s betting that culinary offerings become an ever-increasing part of the draw. (Still, in recent months Harrods has been wrestling with its recent past, as it deals with allegations of assault by a former owner, the late Mohamed Al Fayed.)
The latest project for the current owners—the Qatar Investment Authority—has been revitalizing The Georgian. The vast, 164-seat room (including yet-to-open roof terrace) on the 4th floor had coasted along for decades while the rest of Harrods’ dining spots modernized. But after an extensive revamp by David Collins Studio, this vaulted Edwardian room in a Victorian building has returned as a newly polished jewel in the world’s most famous department store’s crown. Now its dripping in 25 chandeliers, a vast loop of velvety booths and swaths of embroidered curtains.
Waves of Afternoon Tea
The two chefs in charge at The Georgian are both pastry-making authorities. Since its inception in 1911, the place has specialized in afternoon tea, and Markus Bohr, Harrods’ executive pastry chef, has a team of 60 on-site bakers, chocolatiers and patissiers who are powering the Food Halls and creating a carousel of treats for The Georgian.
On reopening day, Nov. 4th, a marathon of tasting starts with the £75 ($96) afternoon tea. Dispensing with old-fashioned tiered stands, the tea comes in waves. First, there’s an excellent amuse bouche of slow-cooked short rib topped with black garlic caviar in a crispy potato wafer basket. Next to arrive, a diminutive Godminster cheddar custard buckwheat tart topped with jewel-like apple cubes, another brilliant textural bite. Finger sandwiches follow, and crowd-pleasers like the cucumber, and smoked salmon are well executed; less classic choices such as the duck à la orange option and a lackluster celeriac sando aren’t as successful. (Devotees take note: Staff will replenish the sandwiches.)
Next up, warm scones, straight off the baking tray and deposited on the accompanying jam trolley, which wheels out a combination of classics and seasonal varieties. The blackcurrant stands out, cutting through the unctuous clotted cream. The menu rounds off with a mini gateau, a cookie-topped craquelin choux bun and a sablé biscuit, while roving tea sommeliers top up your cup.
After the jam trolleys get parked up for the day, the spotlight shifts to the dinner service, which is now in the hands of chef Calum Franklin, Britain’s preeminent savory piemaker. He became famous for his beautifully crafted versions at the Pie Room in Rosewood’s Holborn Dining Room, then traveled to Paris to promote reimagined British food classics at his recently opened Public House. Now he’s returned to London to again champion the art of the pie.
A £90 Centerpiece Pie
On opening night at The Georgian, the lights were dimmed from earlier in the day, with mellow background music, courtesy of a centrally located white grand piano behind the buzz from the smartly dressed crowd.
As with Bohr’s afternoon tea service, heritage is a guiding principle of the dinner menu, and Franklin uses over a century’s worth of archived menus as reference points. Take the 1960 pâté en crôute, the epitome of French culinary nerdiness. The mosaic-like pastry encloses a well-judged smoked rabbit, bacon and pistachio filling set in Marsala jelly. At £18, however, a halved slice feels like a stingy beginning to a meal. Among other starters, a smoked haddock Scotch egg (£15) riffs on the British picnic favorite, with creamy haddock filling cradling a dinky quail egg, which could’ve survived without the addition of a cockle-infused sauce escabeche and onion marmalade.
The make-up of the entrées is loosely split between Franklin’s pies and straight-forward main dishes such as a roast autumn salad (£25), grilled Dover sole (£65) and lemon and thyme chicken (£35).
But the pies are the draw, and The Georgian Pie Experience for two is the headliner. The £90 centerpiece is wheeled out theatrically to the table on a pie trolley. It’s eye-catching, gleaming and mahogany-colored thanks to a cream-infused egg wash. It’s portioned table-side with supporting dishes: ratatouille, deep-fried lamb sweetbreads and tempura anchovies positioned around it like orbiting moons. The sides are meant to evoke accompaniments to lamb dishes served over the years at The Georgian, but they are an uncomfortable fit. Still, the main event is gratifying—slow-cooked, falling-apart lamb shoulder and glossy gravy encased in a trademark short crust. If you choose to order a roast potato on the side, be advised that, although it will be truly lovely, it will also be a solitary and, at £9, a notably expensive one.
Elsewhere on the pie selection, perhaps for another visit, is a domed leek and potato iteration as well as a chicken and penny bun mushroom version, accompanied by wafts of tarragon.
Post-pie, if there’s space for dessert, you might eschew the theatrics of the trifle trolley in favor of a superb baked lemon curd tart.
This was the first night, with a sense that elements were being finessed; no doubt many of the wobbles will be corrected. There is a relentless industry to Harrods culinary offerings from the cavernous on-site kitchens that work around the clock to service the Food Halls, to the ambitions of the boardroom. Ashley Saxton, the store’s director of restaurants, sees sitting down for a meal as a critical element to Harrods’ future. “We’re using restaurants to fuel the store’s long-term success,” he told Bloomberg in 2022. Now he views the 110-year-old Georgian as an opportunity to bring in a fresh audience. “The last thing we would ever want to be is generic—dining at Harrods needs to be a special experience.” It was, he adds, ”our guiding principle when relaunching The Georgian for a new generation." Still, it is theater and splendor in a ballroom-like space — very much in keeping with Harrods age-old mission of retail razzmatazz.
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