RESTAURANTS

Spectator, The, Jun 23, 2007 by ROSS, DEBORAH

I went out for lunch the other day.

Usually, I don't much care for going out to lunch. Too much of a faff -- and think of the daytime TV I might miss. I might even miss A Place in the Sun, in which couples spend a whole hour investigating properties in Croatia before finally deciding not to buy any of them. Sometimes it's so tense -- will they or won't they buy any of the properties? -- that I have to watch through my fingers. But the other day I did do lunch. I even thought to myself, I will do lunch, even if it means missing a nice, retired couple exploring properties in Spain and not buying any of those. I will do lunch and to hell with the consequences! This is how rash and bold I can be.

I frighten myself sometimes.

So I go out for lunch to a place that is rather like one of those 'food courts' you find in shopping centres and at airports and railway stations. Now, I know what you are thinking: this isn't the kind of place I'd miss A Place in the Sun for. Or even To Buy or Not To Buy, in which a couple get to road-test a house before deciding not to buy that either. But this is not one of those food courts where you can only choose between a depressed, wilted baguette or an even sadder slice of pizza. (Sometimes, the slice of pizza looks so sad I will even say, 'Come on, old chap. Cheer up. It can't be as bad as all that. And it's Under the Hammer first thing tomorrow.') This food court is not like that kind of food court. This food court has champagne and oysters and an organic pub serving real ale and 55 full-time chefs serving freshly made dim sum and freshly made sushi and happy-looking slices of organic pizza and Middle Eastern kebabs and vivid salads that make you go 'wow' and tapas (gazpacho with saffron mussels, jambon croquettes) and fresh juices and fresh smoothies and home-made gelato and lovely big, fat chocolatey desserts and lovely big, fat, non-chocolatey desserts.

Where is this place? It's on the top floor of the new Whole Foods Market in Kensington and it's brilliant, and if you don't believe me, what do I care? It's crowded enough as it is. In fact: why don't you just bugger off? Do I ever crash your new finds?

Whole Foods Market (which already, by the way, owns the six Fresh & Wilds in this country) is on High Street Kensington, in the art deco building that used to be Barkers and, before that, Biba and, before that, Derry and Toms. It covers 80,000 square foot of space and operates on three floors. It sells food on the first two, and offers all those places to eat on the third. If I recall rightly, which is anyone's guess, my memory now being what it is -- did I tell you that I recently took the cat to the vet and forgot the cat? -- the third floor is where the Biba tea room used to be and where, as teenagers, we'd flick whipped cream and get a point if we hit the breast of one of the naked, bronze statues. (Two points if the cream stuck. What can I say? I was young. ) Anyway, I'll tell you my experience of Whole Foods Market.

I enter via the bakery, which in and of itself is wondrous and gorgeous and fabulous.

There are big breads and little breads, brown breads and white breads, exotic breads you have heard of (cholla, ciabatta) and ones you haven't (ones with cranberries, for example).

And because the bakery is on-site the smell means that, from the off, I feel quite faint with longing and desire. I can't go into everything the Whole Foods Market sells -- it is huge!

-- but I can tell you what I now most remember, which isn't much, but does include: vast slabs of dark, milk and white chocolate cut from a block; piled-high tomatoes of red, orange, yellow and stunning near-black ones from Italy; a beautiful, oozing, smelly cheese room where you can sample before buying or even sample instead of buying (naughty, but nice! ); a muesli bar where you can mix your own muesli; a nut bar where you can grind your own nut butters; more than 40 different kinds of plump, sausages made on the premises; slices of beef so rare and tender-looking I have to suck back my own dribble (not nice! ); a 12-metre seafood counter offering 12 metres of seafood -- it's amazing and, I'm sorry, Waitrose, I thought I loved you but now I can see it was just a crush. This sort of place makes Waitrose look like Netto.

You know, the thing that occurs to me most is this: on the whole, our supermarkets just don't give any impression of liking food very much, let alone respecting the produce. When was the last time you went into Tesco and saw such a stunning display of apples you thought, ohh, I must have some of those apples? Of course, Whole Foods Market is a business -- it has 190 stores in North America, which last year turned over $5.6 billion -- but it also appears to love the stuff it sells. Perhaps, even, it is so successful because it loves the stuff it sells. OK, it's already come in for a lot of flack in the press, particularly for being expensive, which is true. It is expensive. Some tomatoes, for example, are an eye-watering £7.99 a kilo.