Looks Good - Tastes Sublime

Harrods Food Halls are launching a new range of gourmet essentials and luxury treats. Launching in September, the new range has been developed by foodies for foodies, and draws inspiration from the original Art Nouveau architecture of the Knightsbridge Food Halls.

The original designs from William James Neatby, the renowned arts and crafts ceramic sculptor and artist, use Royal Doulton tiles to fill the Food Halls with hunting scenes, gilded peacocks and pheasants, and stylized wall decorations. The journal of the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1903 praised his designs as ‘a triumph of original modern style and practical application of sound principles’.

Today, over one hundred years later, Neatby’s designs are as fresh and vibrant as ever and have been re-visioned to provide vivid contemporary packaging for the new range.

The collection will include Mediterranean, confectionery, preserves, condiments, tea and coffee, biscuits, puddings, tisanes and dressings. Provenance is the key, with most categories being produced in small batches by artisan producers. A few select examples include:

Condiments

Traditionally made in small quantities, using family recipes, in the heart of the Wiltshire countryside, the complete range of preserves is made without artificial preservatives or colourings. Each recipe, a chutney or condiment ‘as good as you would make at home’.

Mustard is ground from whole seed and spices; only wine and cider vinegars are used; fresh garlic, chilli and pimentos are used instead of dried, and wild horseradish root is gathered on the banks of the Humber. All this accounts for the clean, clear, classic tastes

Biscuits

Baked in a family bakery in Dervyshire, the Food Halls sweet biscuits are all butter biscuits using traditional recipes. Ingredients include the finest milk or dark Belgian chocolate, hazelnuts, real citrus zest and whole fruit pieces.

Tea

Each year the Harrods tea buying team visit India and Sri Lanka during peak quality harvesting periods in order to ensure that only the finest quality leaf is used for our teas. Harrods use only ‘orthodox’ produced tea (ie tea leaves which are rolled by machine not chopped up into small particles) which is the traditional form of production as it is felt the difference in flavour can be tasted in the cup. A select number of tea gardens are chosen to produce the finest teas for the store.

Harrods were the first to launch Organic tea 10 years ago. Now, the store has developed Fairtrade teas. These teas are sourced from its partner Organic & Fairtrade gardens – Ambootia, Seeyok & Selimbong in Darjeeling; Banaspaty & Rembeng in Assam and Idulgashinna & Venture in Sri Lanka. Harrods maintains direct relationships with these gardens and visits regularly to ensure that the principles and spirit of Organic and Fairtrade production are followed at all times during the production process.

To find out more, visit Harrods.com.