Stelle di Stelle is a pop-up idea in the basement of Harrod's. I don't remember how I heard about it, but basically five different Michelin Star restaurants in Italy are coming here for one month each over the course of five months. I wasn't really surprised by this as apparently Harrod's had a French Laundry pop-up a year or so ago (that we missed), so I decided to book a couple of lunches. So far, we've been to one of our two bookings.
The venue itself isn't that exciting. But you're in Harrod's, so there's a level of poshness and glamor that just seems to exude from the place. When we arrived, there weren't many people, but the restaurant definitely filled up over the next couple of hours.
One thing to be warned about is that if you don't tell them in advance you have dietary restrictions, they may not have something for you to substitute. I imagine that having only one month in a place, it's hard to have extra food on hand. But they do really try to help when you can. But don't be like someone we overheard that didn't tell them in advance, then explain they don't eat red meat and ask for chicken, when clearly nothing they serve there is with chicken. (They did find them more fish though.) Also if you say you don't eat red meat, don't then decide ham is okay. Really?
The service did seem a bit off. It's as if they just hired people to do this, so it wasn't Michelin starred service that you would get if you were in a real restaurant. But the service wasn't terrible.
The food was incredible. We started with some amazing Parmesan and ham. The starter was a poached egg with truffle. You really can't go wrong with that. A nice light pasta dish with seafood was next. Then a great lamb course followed by amazing chocolate. We got the wine pairings (as they really aren't much more than getting the meal), and they did a great job. We did really enjoy one of the wines so much we got a photo so we can look for it later.
They definitely did a good enough job that we decided to keep our second booking for January (where Piazza Duomo, the 39th best restaurant in the world will be serving). If you get the chance to go, you should definitely try it out before the they're done for good! read more