Dim Sum & Iberian Ham

For Christmas last year my brother gave us Harrods vouchers with the explicit instructions to spend them on something extraordinary. Instantly we knew what we were going to do – buy some cheese of course. Nick and I love eating cheese at some wonderful department store’s cheese bar. We developed a hankering for cheese bars on our first visit to Sydney together many years ago. Our favourite cheese bar experience so far has been at a German department store, Ka De We, which has the most fabulous of all food halls. (If you are ever in Berlin you must go). 

Last Saturday while in London, we arrived at Harrods suitably starving and keen to blow £60 on some (overpriced) cheese and wine. In looking for the cheese bar we stumbled across the Dim Sum bar (Yum Cha to the Australian readers). Enjoying dim sum for brunch on a Sunday is another one of our favourite pastimes so we decided to enjoy and amuse-bouche of dumplings & steamed pork buns. Although in Australia we could have comfortably fed 10 people for the price of the three dumplings and two pork buns that we shared, they were absolutely delicious.

With our sugar levels restored we continued our search for the cheese bar.  Harrods foodhall has an oyster bar, seafood bar, sushi bar, rotisserie, pizzeria, ice cream bar, Champaign bar and an espresso bar, not to mention the many cafes and restaurants on other floors, but as we discovered no cheese bar. Devastated we decided to drown our sorrows with some ham and sherry at the Iberian Ham Bar. And what a treat that turned out to be. We shared a monstrous plate of Iberian ham, some olives and some patatas bravas, and washed it all down with some sherry. The ham was described as a ‘truly sublime delicacy’ and ‘the most exquisite unique, traditional, pure Iberico Spanish ham’. The combination of diet based on acorns from Spain and the pigs freedom to wander at will supposedly resulted in ham of supreme juiciness, flavour, taste and scarceness. I have not eaten enough Iberian ham to be able to verify this but it was DELICIOUS.

We left satisfied and confident that we had kept our promise of spending the money on something extraordinary. Thanks Liam.