Food reviews

Fifth Floor, Harvey Nichols

Above: Fifth Floor

Dinner at Harvey Nichols’ Fifth Floor is a proper treat. The restaurant is separated off from the rest of the top floor foodie paradise, an enclosed oval shaped space that’s all blue and white with an 1930s ocean liner feel. It feels smart, flawless and serene, a bit like a wedding venue in its consistent colour scheme and thoughtful table arrangements. You can tell it’s a special occasion, even if it’s only really a rainy Tuesday evening.

There are three menus and they demand a lot of attention. Which promises a good and interesting meal, though inspires a lot of indecision and makes ordering seem like an enormous task when you’ve just sat down and want to chat urgently to your companion. Luckily for the indecisive, one of the three is a tasting menu, devised to include the highlights of the others and even comes with specially selected wine to go with each course. But we weren’t quite ready for seven courses, so ordered combinations from the a la carte menu and the cheaper market menu.

And it was all delicious. Market menu dishes were clearly less elaborate than a la carte ones but equally high class. My native lobster salad (a la carte) starter came with pink grapefruit and cashew nuts which was a delicious and unexpected combination, while my friend’s beetroot gravadlax (market) was simpler, less surprising but just as satisfying. Mains were organic Shetland cod with ragout of beans, onions, sweet peppers and mange tout, a lovely dish, and grilled salmon trout with bok choi, lemon and ginger, which was tasty and flawless. Perfect puddings are full of exciting ingredients such as quince, fig and pepper, looking and tasting absolutely lovely.

We’ll certainly be back – hopefully for the Fifth Floor New Year’s Eve bash which promises to be an exciting occasion as usual (see page 40 for details).
Pendle Harte

Place:
Fifth Floor, Harvey Nichols,
109-125 Knightsbridge SW1
020 7235 5250
Feels like:
A wedding on a cruiseship
Tastes like:
Clever and unusual, light and delicate
Costs:
A la carte £39.50 for three courses; market menu £24.50