First look inside the UK's most over-the-top chocolate store, where a single bar costs £350

A single 50g bar of To’ak’s Guayasamin Art Series chocolate in the new look Chocolate Hall at Harrods will set you back £350. On the gram-per-gram scale, that puts it somewhere between the A5 Kobe beef fillet and Prunier Heritage caviar available in the adjacent Fresh Market Hall. To’ak is reputed to produce the world’s most expensive chocolate and Harrods, of course, has the UK exclusive.

While such big-ticket bars will bring tears to the eyes of connoisseurs whose budgets are closer to Charlie Bucket’s than Veruca Salt’s, let us recall the Harrods’ motto – ‘Omnia Omnibus Ubique’ – all things for all people, everywhere. When the Chocolate Hall reopens to the public this Friday, there really will be something for everybody, from chocolate coins right up to three-year-aged chocolate produced from rare Ecuadorian heirloom cacao (that would be the To’ak).

The transformation of the Chocolate Hall, the fourth and final one of Harrods' famous Food Halls to be refurbished, is a ‘landmark moment’ in the store’s £300m store restoration programme, according to André Lewis, Head of Food, Wine and Spirits at Harrods. “We have been selling chocolate since 1870 and records show that by 1902 we were already making our own chocolate in Knightsbridge, which makes the Chocolate Hall central to the Harrods story and our heritage.”

The upgrade, it’s fair to say, was overdue. By comparison with the shiny new Roastery and Bake Hall, Fresh Market Hall, and Dining Hall, the Chocolate Hall had started to look a little fusty, even when the retail curation was anything but. David Collins Studio was brought in to restore the Grade II*-listed Edwardian beauty which, to give some idea of the scale of the task, involved working with specialist conservation architects to restore and in some cases entirely remake 80 different tiles by hand. The result is respectful and modern, bright and approachable.

The room’s beating heart is the Chocolaterie, a ‘theatre of chocolate’ where chocolate is made in full view by Harrods’ brigade of pâtissiers and chocolatiers, among whose number a previous UK World Chocolate Master winner in Head Pastry Chef Alastair Birt. This is experiential retail for the modern luxury consumer, a multi-sensory approach that emphasises the sights and smells, tastes and textures that make you want to unwrap a bar on the spot.

“It’s not just about the showmanship,” notes Lewis. “The beauty of live chocolate production is also in the taste, so much of which is down to the freshness of the chocolate.” The idea is that one can now buy a bar of, say, salted caramel-filled chocolate, made before one’s very eyes, and eat it that same day. “It's an elevated level of quality.”

Sustainability is now front and centre. Since August 2020, all new chocolate products launched at Harrods have been made using responsibly sourced cocoa, and buyers work only with suppliers who purchase from accredited sources or directly from cocoa farmers to ensure they are paid a premium.

Thus, one can trace the source of the cacao used in Harrods’ new 68% Single Estate bar, produced through a partnership with Firetree, back to one couple, William and Mary, who grow it exclusively for Firetree in the volcanic soil of Santa Isabel Island in the Solomon Islands.

One could easily lose a day in the new department, hearing such stories, discovering new flavours. There are exclusive lines galore and eleven inviting concessions, including Godiva, with its dipping station for those iconic chocolate-coated strawberries; masters of their craft William Curley and Pierre Marcolini; and Turin’s beloved Venchi, famous for its ‘pick and mix’ chocolates (the new matcha cremoso is something else).

Particularly thrilling is the first global concession for Le Bonheur from Paris by way of St Petersburg, whose covetable paper-wrapped pralines come in the most inventive array of flavours, think apricot kernel and milk chocolate, puffed rice and ginger, and cashew and hibiscus tea. You can have a lot of fun with £350.

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