For a place with such a celebrated food hall, it’s still strange to think of Harrods as a dining destination. That vast site, however, is dotted with catering options, from simple cafés and coffee bars to the considerably more elaborate, via solid performers like Pasta Evangelists.
That “considerably more elaborate” section packs considerable punch, from the likes of Caviar House & Prunier to names such as Jason Atherton, Tom Kerridge, and Vineet Bhatia. And, as of late last year, Björn Frantzén, the multi-starred, multi-award-winning Swedish chef who’s brought his Studio Frantzén concept, quite appropriately, to the top of the shop on Harrods’s fifth floor.
In short, Studio Frantzén is a stunner, both in terms of looks and culinary execution. Style-wise, think Knightsbridge-does-Scandinavian-lodge, a multi-layered, wood-lined, vast-yet-intimate space, cleverly lit, and dotted with throw blankets. There’s a similar fusing of styles in the menu too, where that Scandi/new Nordic spirit meets Asian influences – and frequently to quite stunning effect.
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The menu and, one assumes, every meal they’ve served to date, starts with warm, laminated milk bread, blond miso butter, and borage honey (£9) which is 446 calories of laminated, genius-perhaps-even-god-level baking. Yes, each menu item comes with two figures: the calorie count and the price. The Scandi-Japanese thing means the former is often surprisingly low. The Scandi-Japanese thing, and the postcode, means the latter is often predictably high. It is, however, almost always worth it and certainly evident in the quality of the ingredients.
Bread done, and the hits keep coming, whether it’s big ticket stuff such as the tartar of tuna and red deer, or the surprise brilliance of a bitter red salad, tossed in shiso and pumpkin hot sauce. The tartar (£29/149 calories) comes with “Kalix vendace roe, wasabi cream, fermented plum and warm ginger butter” and it’s achingly pretty on the plate. The inspiration came, we’re told, from the two proteins being the same approximate shade, but the pairing is so much more than just visual effect or optical illusion.
The tartar of tuna and red deer
(Image credit: Studio Frantzén/Facebook)
The bitter red salad is also a revelation, each leaf subtly coated in a slick of umami and spice… and its numbers (£8/119 calories) suggest you could, if budget demands it, put together a pretty decent, lowish calorie/two-digit bill menu just from the sides. Or come for the good value lunch – two courses for £45 or three courses for £55.
If you do, you have more willpower than I do because, when faced with dishes billed as steamed turbot “Jansson’s temptation” (£59/808 calories), I will almost always applaud like a Teletubby and ignore subsequent calls from medical professionals and my credit card company. It is, frankly, a divine plate of food, as perfectly cooked a piece of turbot as you’ll find, and taken to new heights of savoury pleasure with butter sauce, anchovies, caviar and dill. It’s precisely what overdrafts (and possibly statins) are for.
While we’re talking defibrillators – kind of – the attention-grabbing dessert is the rum-raisin ice cream (£14/316 calories). Sounds so very 1970s until you read the small print involving “frozen foie gras, PX-syrup and yeast mousse”. It’s a rich little thing of tasty decadence, but it’s actually nudged down the pecking order by the (alright, slightly more calorific) freshly baked madeleines (£7/325 calories), with beurre noisette and Kyoto miso. A very fine finish to a very fine meal.
Service is deeply knowledgeable – to that American waiting staff depth of understanding and detail – and the wine list is hugely creative and clever. Although I guess you have to be when you’re trying to match fish and game on the same fork and puddings made with liver. Price-wise it’s perhaps predictably somewhat eye-popping with nothing we could see sub-£50, although there is an extensive by-the-glass list, starting at a moderate value £9 (and soaring into three figures for chateaus Margaux or d’Yquem because, well, they can).
The verdict
Some will find it challenging, some will find it exorbitant, some will find Studio Frantzén pretentious. But some of you – correction, some of us – will understand and revel in its invention, precision and originality.
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