Telephone: 020 7629 1234
Address: Selfridges, Oxford Street, London W1.
From £8 to £30 a head, depending on location.
Recently, I was approached by the editor of Selfridges Magazine, the title published under contract for the London department store. She wanted to know whether I would be interested in doing a little restaurant reviewing. Specifically, she wanted to know whether I would review some of the store's restaurants. It soon became clear there would be no room for a review that was anything less than a few rounds of the Hallelujah Chorus. I declined.
Still, it occurred to me that they must think they have something worth reviewing. In any case, with the Christmas shopping season upon us and thousands of people heading for the capital, now would be a good time to see just what a landmark department store has in the way of eating-out possibilities. I will, from the start - and unbribed by the management - declare myself a fan of the food hall, which I think the best in London.
Harrods may have more theatre; even, possibly, more choice. But it is not approachable or user friendly, and is usually thronged with tourists. Selfridges food hall is a place where people really shop and, if I was rich enough to afford, say, silk-lined pants every day, I would shop there regularly, too. It is, naturally, hideously expensive.
The presence of that great food hall demands that Selfridges turns in a good performance on the catering front. There is no excuse for shoddy goods. Certainly, food is a core part of the business. There are at least 11 food and drink outlets dotted across the six gargantuan floors. They stretch from Café 400, a pizzeria tucked away in a dark corner of the basement, through the Lab Café on the second floor for ladies who lunch, to the Garden Café on the fourth. The sprauncy part of the operation is the Premiere Dining Room on the second floor, which serves two courses for £16.50 and has a modern British meets French meets, oh, just about anything else menu that reads like so many others in the capital at the moment.
I chose to ignore the Premiere. I wanted to take a different course at a different place and they would not let me try just one dish. It had to be two courses or nothing. Instead, I started in the ground-floor food hall at the Oyster Bar, where two young women were cheerfully shucking as if their lives depended upon it. Irish rock oysters cost £1.75 each here, which is pretty good value given they are on sale at the fish counter for 99p. The mark-up seems fine for the cost of someone to open them for you, space in which to eat them, a bowl of zingy sherry vinegar and some bread. The two I ordered were plump and terrific, less so the bread. It wasn't exactly stale, just weary from having been cut up some time previously. This was odd because, if I looked to my right, I could see the bakery, where the stuff was arriving fresh by the minute.
Upwards and onwards to the Garden Café on the fourth floor. This is a food court with representatives of more international styles of food than is really healthy. Clearly it is the place to come if you have restless kids, though the cost will quickly mount up - even for the veteran fat-walleted Selfridges shopper. Eight quid for a Pad Thai from the Southeast Asian counter is steep, particularly given that you serve yourself. The women at the cash tills were gloomy and dour, and many of the tables remained uncleared for long periods of time. Still, the small bowl of Mediterranean fish soup that I chose from the soup bar was lovely - a potent broth with lots of big, solid pieces of fish.
Downwards to the second floor and Gordon's Café, named after the American millionaire Gordon Selfridge, who founded the store in 1909. It's a clever recreation of an American bar and grill which, despite being carved off from the rest of the fashion floor by little more than a partition, feels like a separate entity. Service is swift and friendly. It's just a shame the club sandwich I tried, again at a whopping £8, was so lacklustre. There is only one test here: could I go to the food hall two floors below and buy the ingredients to make a better club sandwich? The answer is, most certainly. What they served up was dry and solid and, if there was any of the advertised mayonnaise, it was being terribly shy. I asked for some extra on the side, which improved matters - but only a little.
Finally, for coffee and cake, I returned to the heart of the food hall and the patisserie counter, which has its own bar. Here, you get to order from the same selections on offer to the shoppers. A lemon, orange and lime tart on sale for £2.40, costs £2.85 eaten at the bar and was sublime: a crisp pastry base and a rich, sweet-but-sharp cream filling topped with candied peel. What's more, you get to sit and watch the passing trade. People always look happy and expectant when they have decided to buy cake. (As against, say, at fish counters, when they always look pensive, as if they are about to make some terrible mistake.) Having previously eaten at the store's salt beef bar just a few metres away, and thought it damn fine, the lesson here is clear: when eating at Selfridges, stick as close to the food hall as possible. It's where the action is.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
