SUIP!

Selfridges is an urbanite’s food paradise. Under the swarming floors of designer goods, Chanel-toting Japanese women and faux-fur coats is a food hall devoted to oddities and foodie indulgences. A store in which the very forefront of consumer and luxury goods have made their names for 102 years - not to mention the shop floor on which Louis Blériot displayed his Channel-crossing plane after his famous 1909 flight – its food hall is where new brands on the London food scene meet their first popular critical tests. Do well here, and you might just make it.

While you can buy pork crackling crisps, Marmite flavoured dark chocolate and a £15 000 bottle of whiskey, it’s beer selection has seen better days. Although you used to be able to pick up any number of brilliant beers, both local and international, the selection has been pared back a bit, and seems to be mostly geared towards people physically eating in the food hall and not those shopping for ingredients.

But it’s not as if it’s bad: I picked up a couple BrewDogs, a trio of beers from Meantime, a London brewery about whom I will be doing a Tasting Notes post later this week, as well as a house ale brewed in the oldest inhabited house in Scotland called Traqauir. Besides, the sheer amount of niche and specialty products rubbing shoulders with each other in one space can be overawing on your first visit, especially if department stores are a novelty to you.

I’ll be writing about all my purchases later this week, but until then, I hope you find these few photos titillating to your foodie and design senses.

There are few things as nice as walking out of this hundred year-old store with a luminous yellow bag in your sweaty, sweaty grasp.