Harvey Nichols: the Foundation Bar
I WAS predisposed to like the Foundation Bar. Newly constructed in the basement of Harvey Nichols, it earned my gratitude — even before I had eaten in it — for displac- ing the ghastly Joe's Cafe from that site. I never understood how Joe's Cafe managed to do so well and for so long: the food was bad and expensive and the service offhand. That Harvey Nichols's own restaurant, Fifth Floor, was making such a success of things made it even more baffling. In fact, Fifth Floor isn't as good as it was when it started. The food isn't bad but I suspect everyone's interest is being rather more energetically focused on the Harvey Nichols mega-restaurant due to open on the site of the OM building. No doubt, too, there's been rather a lot to do with this new bar in the basement, but it would be a pity if things were allowed to get stale upstairs.
Fifth Floor still works very well at night, although I wish the whole of that floor would stay open so that one could get some food shopping done at the same time. It seems bad business sense to have everyone gazing lustfully at all those shelves of seductively packaged, overpriced comestibles without being able to buy any of them. That, I admit, is not the restau- rant's fault. But where the restaurant could do better is with its lunchtime menu: it's too heavy, too full of black pudding and elaborately constructed dishes which pre- suppose that people actually want to eat properly. I know there's a less formal cafe attached, but even so it is possible to want to sit down in a civilised way without having to eat enormously. And I'd have thought that would be what most of the clientele — size 10 and there to buy clothes that leave no room for greed or even appetite — would want. Since the Harvey Nichols Food Market already makes a thing of stocking Japanese food, I'd have thought a trim little sushi bar on the premises would make perfect sense. The Foundation Bar doesn't quite com- mit the same offence but it is not entirely innocent in this matter. It would be easier simply to eat less here, but there is a pauci- ty of off-duty food: plain grilled fish and that sort of thing is not in evidence. These days, department store restaurants are not allowed to be incidental, they have to take centre stage. I suppose if the food is good enough the place will draw customers who go to eat rather than to shop and eat, but it can make everything more tiring. If one wants to grab something to eat while shop- ping, one doesn't necessarily want it to be a performance. But all department stores are on the HN trail when it comes to in-house restaurants now. I have yet to make it to the Terence Conran affair in Selfridge's, but I have been to the joint in Dickins & Jones, which really should be called the Foundation Bar since it seems to share floor space with the lingerie department. I have great affection for Dickins & Jones anyway (v. good women's clothes, the full Designer Floor stuff and so on, but because it's not as hip as Harvey Nichols there aren't the crowds), and the restaurant will be good, I feel, when it settles down a little.
I don't know if it's Absolutely Fabulous that's made Harvey Nichols as trendy as it is, but the Foundation Bar is already full of people — at least in the evening — who regard the place as a desirable destination in itself. It's very modern, very cool: slabs of acid colour and sheets of shiny steel. Waiting staff, in techno-Mao outfits and brandishing electronic notepads, look as if they've been beamed down from Star Trek. But they're friendly, too, which is a relief. Food is mixed: no sushi, but a deal is made of their yakitori — an elegant Japanese version of kebabs — which can be drunk with hot or cold sake. For the rest, the menu is aggressively trendy, which I suppose should come as no surprise. It really is ludicrous that panzanella, the tomato-doused salad that Tuscan peasants invented to use up their stale bread, is pur- veyed in swanky restaurants for £6.50 a throw, but there it is. And here it's not a particularly good panzanella. Still, another starter of salt cod (here described by its Portuguese spelling) salad with roasted peppers was magnificent: the fish rinsed and then marinaded to translucent tender- ness, and the peppers sweet and oily and fragrant. Grilled tuna came with a smoked chilli and crab salsa and crème fraiche. The crab was all but impossible to detect, but the dish was pleasurable enough, although I would not be inspired to imitate it or even to make a habit of eating it. Calves' liver ('pan fried') came with a pile of garlic mash below and a fried egg on top: this is going it a bit, even for me, and I couldn't manage more than one eighth of it. This dish typi- fies what is wrong about this sort of menu: it's too busy, too jumpy; so much tastes as if the ingredients were decided upon before anyone even started cooking.
Of the puddings I tried, the crème briilee was as it should be, unctuous and aromatic, but the caramelised apple tart with Jersey cream read rather better than it ate. With a couple of glasses of house red and a bottle or so of water, the bill came to around £80.
Foundation Bar: Harvey Nichols, London SW1; tel: 0171 235 5000.
ella Lawson
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