When I was planning my trip to London, I was determined to have high tea since I knew the experience would be transcendent given that high tea is a well know tradition in England. Friends and guide books suggested Fortnum & Mason for high tea. I had no idea that Fortnum & Mason was one of the oldest (established 1707) department stores in London. Given this fact I was delighted at the prospect of having the best high tea experience but more on that later.
The other "can't miss" experience according to everyone was a trip to Harrod's department store. I had heard of it of course but again was not aware of the insane "food hall" that awaited me. Sonya & I set out to go to Harrod's and see the whole store with the agenda of hitting up the food hall first (of course my # 1 priority is always food), but we never got to the rest of the store because we were HYPNOTIZED by the food "rooms". I thought Sonya may get bored with the food hall because food is not her priority but I think that Harrods food hall has something for everyone.
This is the entrance (picture above) which is very modest in just saying food halls, restaurants. The truth is that when you step through the threshold of this main door, you are then in a maze of food halls for all different types of foods. There are 5 different halls besides the main section where the prepared foods are. I tried to take pictures of all of the food hall entrances but I felt bad because I did not bring a camera and had to keep asking Sonya to borrow hers. At one point Sonya said why don't you just hold the camera and take as many pictures as you want which was very generous of her being that I can sometimes be a pain with my wanting to take pictures of all the food I see and eat.
When I walked into the main area, I thought that was it and I got so excited/caught up in marveling over all of the different kinds of foods that were there. For those of you who do not know me, you have no idea that the decision making process of choosing something to eat in the face of too many choices can be a mind boggling experience. I have trained myself when it comes to a restaurant to take a peek at the menu as a preview (thank you menupages) or to scan quickly (almost like speed reading) and make a decision. Of course all logic or process goes out the window when there are so many choices, let alone rooms, and each choice seems more magnificent than the next. Did you know that there are 26 restaurants in Harrods alone. What is a girl to do???????
I think the healthiest option was sushi but I thought why have sushi when there are so many choices so scan all of the options first then decide. Oh poor Sonya now I feel that I may have tortured her a bit with my need to pick the one best thing.
I thought oh yes I will delight in the beauty of the fresh vegetables but then I realized that there were not too many prepared vegetables to choose from.
The fruit and veg section went by so quickly. I actually bought some flavored sea salts (rose, black olive, mediterranean, curry, plain) which cost 20 pounds but I thought how great salt that I probably
could not find at home in NYC. HAHAHA, jokes on me since I actually paid around $40.00 with the crap exchange rate. If anyone is into the best things on Oprah's lists in her magazine then they would be impressed with me as the same salts are featured in her January issue of best gifts.
All of the searching/looking around made me ravenous and the funny thing was that at that point my decision making process was skewed and I also ended buying beef wellington potato chips which by the way did not taste bad but also did not taste like beef wellington. The real bummer about Harrods is their look but don't touch attitude. Meaning you
were able to buy anything you wanted but you could not eat any of it while walking in the main spaces. If you wanted to actually eat while in Harrods food halls, you had to be sitting at one of the restaurants. I am sure you could all guess at this point that there were no seats because of this rule. I actually saw a security (the real food police) guard tell a man that he could not drink his bottle of water in the main hall. Sonya and I decided to corral a few things and make a mad dash for the door and eat standing up just right outside of the store. It was a bit ridiculous but I did not care since I was STARVING!!!!!!
We decided on some cheese bread and scones which were amazing but not sure if it was because we had gotten all worked up or if was that the cheese bread was hot and melty. After scarfing along with the rest of the patrons outside the food hall on the street, we went back in for round 2.
Now is when we chose to spend some serious time and money in the chocolate room. Chocolate is not my first choice but there were so many other sweets and confections in that room that I had to try or at least drool over everything. I did buy a few choice pieces of chocolate that had some weird things added like jalepeno or roses.
Of course Sonya wanted to try the cupcakes since she has a better palette than I do when it comes to picking the best ones. The funniest thing was that after carefully picking out a few mini cupcakes to eat later, was that they were all the wrong flavors than the ones we picked. At the end of the day, it did not matter because we ate them alongside of the cupcakes from Hummingbird which in my opinion blew the rest of the competition out of the water.
These are mini petite fours which looked like tiny wedding cakes but they had a huge price tag. I guess you do what you pay for sometimes.
We did not get to try these but I was thinking how great would it be to have bread and butter pudding. I want to thank the person who invented bread and butter pudding.
The entrance to the baked goods room. I guess they think it is a novelty to have Krispy creme doughnuts. Don't get me wrong, I eat them from time to time but it is not something I would have expected to see in Harrods.
This is the assortment of scones and breads, YUMMY YUMMY.
After perusing the whole food section of Harrods I bought a turkey sandwich and then Sonya and I went in search of a place outside to sit and eat. Public squatting is very rare in London. In NYC people sit on stoops or lean everywhere. I was very tempted but waited till we got to a main intersection that had benches.
Later that night when Sonya and I settled in for the evening, it was back to the search for the perfect high tea which led me to look at Fortnum and Masons menu. We were both disappointed because the tea sandwiches had lot's of mayo which both of hate as well as cucumbers which surprisingly I do not like. YES YOU HEARD THAT RIGHT, I HATE MAYO, always have and always will, don't know why it just skeeves me. So now the secret is out, I do not love all things food.
As the week progressed, it seemed like the formal high tea thing was not going to happen so I let it go. Sonya and I were at The National Gallery and then we decided to do our own thing, she went on a walking tour and I decided to go to Fortnum and Mason since it was so close. After going to Harrods, I assumed that Fortnum and Mason would be just as fabulous but it was not quite the same. F & M was much much smaller and only had one small food area which was fine by me since I was already saturated with Harrods.
I settled on the parlour at F & M where I had a pot of smoky tea and 2 mini scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Then I decided to be very bad and not have anything of substance but since I was still hungry I ordered some strudel which was good but not as good as I had anticipated. I will say that the interior of Fortnum & Mason was beautiful and quite charming. The day concluded with Sonya and I eating dinner at S & M which stands for sausage and mash, I will write all about that in a different posting. So long to department store dining.
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