Technically impressive: “intricate and high-level” Studio Frantzén on Harrods’ fifth floor
(Picture: Press handout)About halfway through my solo lunch at Studio Frantzén in Harrods, nosiness led me into laughable calamity. Snooping around its lavish rooftop, I put my hand on a door and felt its guillotine-sharp edge slice into my palm. Blood sprang forth, paper napkins were hurriedly administered, and there was much fuss in the soft-lit downstairs dining room as the gathered staff summoned a uniformed first aid officer to log the incident and assess.
If parts of this job can sometimes feel like rubbish spycraft (and, especially when I’m booking under a pseudonym, it really can) then this was my undoubted Johnny English moment.
I’ll admit that this is an especially baroque way to open a review. But it is a moment that serves a wider illustrative purpose. Because for all the virtues of this place — which, significantly, is the first London restaurant from Swedish chef and multiple Michelin star-holder, Bjorn Frantzén — my lasting sense was of a venture that, as evidenced by the calorie labelling on its menu and its tucked-away location amid brow bars and racks of Louboutins, was chafing a little against the corporate fussiness of its retail context. Studio Frantzén is gorgeously staged and technically impressive. Even so, it struck me as somewhere that didn’t always add up to the sum of its exquisite individual parts.
This is not to say that things didn’t start pleasantly. The multi-level space is the sort you want to gobble you up. Flattering amber light, fluffy throw blankets, counter seating facing the thrumming kitchen and a gigantic, woodcut-style mural girding the staircase all conjure a futurist log cabin. I began with warm laminated milk bread: a mega-croissant involving tearable, conjoined swirls of glistening viennoiserie, served with an ash-dusted pat of miso and honey butter. Veal tartare, hidden beneath a flurry of aged parmesan and accessorised with truffle aioli, pickled onions, shiitake and toasted almonds, was a compelling tussle between umami and jabbing acidity. Whacking curls of radicchio were dressed in an enjoyably narky, brow-beading hot sauce made from slow-roasted pumpkins.
It should be clear at this point that Frantzén’s lodestars are, generally, animal fats, New Nordic principles and Asian flavour complexity. Though he made his name initially in Stockholm, his empire now stretches to encompass Singapore and Bangkok, and there is an appealingly global eclecticism to his approach. But the flip side of this, without the guiding handrail of a set menu, is the possibility of a meal that feels occasionally discordant. Crisp-charred broccolini in a molasses-thick eel sauce was fantastic. Yet I’m not sure how perfect a match it was for the grilled salmon, dressed with finger limes that couldn’t fully withstand a sea buckthorn beurre blanc’s wave of butter-forward richness.
And, of course, all of this is haunted by the considerable outlay. It’s not just that the prices — £35 for the roasted cauliflower, £85 for grilled lobster with curry and brown butter hollandaise, £50 for the cheapest wine from the leather-bound list — will currently make many recoil. It’s also that this approach nudges Studio Frantzén into “special occasion splurge” territory for the vast majority of us, and so we must judge it by that metric.
Veal tartare, hidden beneath aged parmesan, was a compelling tussle between umami and jabbing acidity
After the jokey first aid guy had given me a blue plaster, I polished off an After Eight tart — clever, if overly polite — and made my way back into the bright maze of mini boutiques.
Commendably pitched at the middle ground between tasting menu Michelin bait and a bistro for moneyed shoppers, Studio Frantzén instead falls between two stools. Intricate, high-level and handsomely crafted, it is, nonetheless, not the sort of singular destination you’ll be imploring friends to sprint across town to. It feels, in more ways than one, like a very beautiful concession.
