Is a soul the only thing unavailable in Harrods?

The Harrods bookshop, which I browse for masochistic reasons, is mesmerising: an homage to the lure of ownership. The first book I find is called, simply, 150 Houses. Is that enough? Then I find Luxury Trains, the Porsche Book, the Lamborghini Book and the Jaguar Book. Then I find a book designed for a lifelong self-guided tour of the world of James Bond, who is a fictional British civil servant. Then I find books called Dior, Balmain, Prada and Gucci. I didn’t know they did words. I want to tell you that the Harrods bookshop is entirely advertorial for the life I can’t afford, but that would be unfair. Because I also find a copy of Mansfield Park in the same colours as a Minion: custard yellow and bright blue. Harrods is very weird and excitable, and it’s owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar.

After laughing at the bookshop – the intellectual snob’s chosen, and ineffectual, snap of resentment – we eat in the Harrods Dining Hall, a pale, tiled, sumptuous Art Deco room in the old fish and meat hall. It is next to the surviving Food Hall, which, despite its palatial fittings, has the same air of raging covetousness that inner London supermarkets had during Covid, when people beat each other for raw chicken because they are insane.

The Dining Hall has many restaurants: Hot Dogs by Three Darlings; Kinoya Ramen Bar; Sushi by MASA, a chef so famous he is owed capitalisation; The Grill; Pasta Evangelists by Perbellini; Dim Sung by China Tang; Kerridge’s Fish & Chips. They sit inside preening Edwardiana, which suits them: decor from the last time such inequality stalked the land. The ceiling is particularly lovely: a tile tableau of geese, medieval would-be Harrods shoppers and a pelican. The pelican represents Christ’s sacrifice – and of that irony there is nothing to say. I think the Dining Hall is aiming for Exotic Bazaar, but lands on cafeteria for those who cannot make up their minds, and do not have to. Harrods is the home of the Chanel ski and the sort of woman who hides her maid’s passport. Why not take everything?

We eat at the tiny Kerridge’s, sitting on bar stools opposite the kitchen. We are seated by a man dressed as a penguin, which is like finding a grand piano in a pub. Possibly because of this, it charms us. This is the land of super-rich, where everyone who serves you, no matter your behaviour, treats you like a beloved child, or imbecile, and for that you only have to pay £100 for two fish-finger sandwiches, pudding and a couple of drinks. Or you can eat lobster (£80), caviar (£490 for 250g), or Dover sole (£52). Pudding is raw sugar: banana split and Mississippi mud pie (both £12.50).

It is inferior to Mackerel Sky, my local fish shack, but I live in west Cornwall, and I can’t see the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar buying it any time soon. Kerridge isn’t here, of course: his name is a franchise. But the charming – they don’t smack us – chefs make us fish-finger sandwiches, food for the imbecile child, with disarming swiftness, and we stare at monied London in all its recklessness. The fingers are haute fingers, and the chips are golden bars.

This is an easy place to be happy if you have no soul, which is, incidentally, the only thing you can’t buy here. I have to navigate watch caves to find the loo, but even so the Dining Hall is my favourite place in Harrods. Food is something you need, not want, and so it gives Harrods, in this form only, a fleeting kind of reality.

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