London, May 15th, 2007 (Written in Hong Kong on May 18)
With 8 PM reservations at the Fat Duck, how the heck were we going to fill the hours until the time came to eat?
By looking at food and eating. Duh.
When we were in London in 2001, we did go to that grande dame of department stores, Harrods. However, we somehow managed to miss the pilgrimage to the food halls! Probably because we were on a backpacker's budget at the time and had to get out of there lest we feel the need to spend thirty pounds on something stupid.
The food halls, though, are like no food court I've ever seen. First of all, you can't eat your purchases there, unless you're at one of their hilariously overpriced bars. (15 pounds for a half-dozen oysters? Roight.) Secondly, they carry things like:
A salmon roulade with crab claws! Clutching its very own flavorant!
Or how about an assortment of twenty or thirty terrines? These were really impressive. Husbear took copious notes, since terrines weren't so much in the course of study at Apicius.
They have things to fit budgets from rich to super rich (especially with the pound holding at right about two dollars at the moment). If you have cash just burning a hole in your pocket, why not drop it on some caviar? Harrods brand, that is!
And if you're a pickle or olive freak like me, Harrods has you covered as well.
They even had some pretty interesting sausages - these were supposed to be from Italy, though we'd never seen anything like them in that country.
I was sorely tempted by these meat pies, but we had after all just eaten like twelve soft-boiled eggs and sausage at our hotel and we had dinner plans. They still look good, though. And so cute! And, well, only like 4 dollars each... not entirely awful...
There's a whole room dedicated to chocolate and desserts, too, including a whole case of fudge and another of Turkish Delight. I remember reading "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" when I was a kid and having no earthly idea what that snot Edmund was going on and on about with his Turkish Delight. At least now I know, (I foud out several years ago, thank you) but I'm still not a fan.
Though all of this food is certainly impressive, it's the rooms it's all contained in where the real decorative insanity has taken hold. Just like the rest of Harrods, actually.
Here's the cheese counter, for instance, with its stained-glass ceiling:
And the vegetable and gift box room, with... vegetable chandeliers! OK, yes, I do want those and may very well hang one in my own home someday.
All in all, though, the food halls left us cold. The prepared foods were insane and wonderful, yes, but after the vegetable and meat markets of Italy, those sections of this department store just didn't do it for us. Yup, we're ruined. And kind of asses.
We did a little more poking around in Harrods, just to check out the luxury bathrooms (well stocked with expensive perfumes) and the Egyptian escalator. Which was awesome. Just like Egypt. Ahem. (Harrods' owner is Egyptian, which explains the pharaoh symbology and Egyptian stuff everywhere.)
At the bottom of the escalator, there's a memorial fountain to Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi al-Fayed. He was the son of Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods, who was killed in the car crash that also killed Diana.
This display includes a wine glass used by the couple on their last night in the hotel suite they were staying in in Paris as well as a diamond ring (possibly engagement ring?) Dodi bought for Diana before they died.
I guess... no comment.
We left Harrods right around lunchtime - we had plans. Meat pie and mash related plans.
There's a place we found online just south of Tower Bridge that we wanted to check out. Getting to the pie shop meant we got nice views of the Tower of London, as well as Tower Bridge.
(Don't worry. We didn't skip the Tower of London just to go to a pie shop - we'd been there in 2001 and didn't feel the overwhelming need to return.)
Then, we crossed Tower Bridge - this is the one most Americans think of when they think "London Bridge." At least I know I used to. What can I say? My grasp of geography has gotten a lot stronger over the past ten years or so.
Don't go to London Bridge by mistake. It's very boring. And the original's in Arizona anyway, paid for by people who according to urban legend made the same mistake I did six years ago.
Manzes pie shop ended up being quite a bit further past the bridge than we were anticipating, but whatever - we needed to preemptively walk off all that pie. When we got there, we were heartened by the look of the place and the prices. A totally straightforward menu.
We plumped for 2 pie 1 mash, with liquor, and jellied eels on the side. Hubear's been a little obsessed with British-style meat pies (and their eels!) ever since before he made that hare pie.
The mash was homemade, from actual potatoes. And very good. The meat pies had a delicious crust, nice and crisp on the top and soft and tender on the bottom, but they had NO FLAVOR. Same with the "liquor" - basically a white gravy "flavored", if you can call it that, with parsely. Lucky there was some vinegar on the table, including a bottle of spicy with two little peppers floating in it. I imagine if this was your comfort food from when you were a child, this would be exactly how you'd like it. Bland.
The eels were... well, take a look, why don't you?
Let's just say they tasted about how they looked. With stronger jelly. Not a new favorite, that's for sure, but to each his own. The vinegar helped. Vinegar always helps.
The place seemed to be popular with locals. In fact, I think we were the only non-local people in there. It's a lot like a London Mario, the restaurant by the Mercato Centrale in Florence where you sit with people you don't know and you eat really fast and then you get up to leave. But with fewer tourists.
Husbear weaseled his way over to the counter for just a second to take pictures. "Sure, love - whatever you want, if it's some kind of personal thing," said the lady behind the counter.
And honestly, that was all of interest for the day, until we went to the Fat Duck. Which I won't write about right now - I think we're going to hold off until we aren't blogging in a hotel room in Asia at 1 in the morning. On that note, toodles!
