When we were in London 2 visits ago, I saw the tea room at the Ritz and really wanted to try their Afternoon Tea. The only time I was able to book was the morning we arrived in London. Fortunately our flight was not delayed and we were able to check into our hotel (Montcalm Mayfair) because we wanted to freshen up, but also because we needed to dress up since the Ritz has a strict dress code (jacket and tie for men) for Afternoon Tea as well as dinner.
Andrea started with a glass of Champagne because why not, we’re at the Rtiz. For our teas, I ordered the the Smoked Earl Grey and Andrea ordered the English Rose Blend. Both were excellent. I really enjoyed the mild smokiness added to Early Grey. I don’t normally like rose flavored beverages, but the tea was excellent without having an overpowering floral character to it.
We were initially delivered the Sandwiches and the Pastries. We started with the sandwiches. From front to back, which is the order in which we consumed them, there was a cheddar cheese with tomato chutney on tomato bread, Scottish smoked salmon with lemon butter on sourdough, ham and grain mustard mayo on brioche, breast of chicken with tarragon creamed mayo on malt bread, cuccumber with cream cheese, dill, mint, on granary bread, and lastly the egg mayo with chopped shallots and watercress on brioche. Andrea is not a fan of mayo so she had said prior to our coming here that she probably would need help on the sandwiches, but she did eat all of them except the egg mayo one since she doesn’t like hard boiled eggs and so that was a double whammy. They were all fine, nothing particularly special, but this is what it is. The egg mayo one came in a large (relatively to all of the other finger sandos) brioche which threw the ratio off for me and made it way too bready.
After we finished the sandwiches, the scones were delivered – a plain and a raisin scone for each of us with the Cornish clotted cream and strawberry preserves. Scones are more similar to what we would call a biscuit than the scones we typically get in the U.S.
The pastries were all fairly sweet, fortunately not U.S. sweet though. We we pretty full from that, but we were told there were two more cakes to come. They rolled out the cake cart and we took one small slice of each. One was carrot cake which also had a filling and was topped with candied pecans. Quite good. I don’t remember the other one that Andrea got, but I think it was a kind of butter creme.
All in all, the experience was exactly that. Tea was superb. Food was plentiful, decent, but not particularly memorably. Really, it was all for the experience which was on my checklist of things to do here and I am seriously regretting not buying some of that smoked earl grey tea to take home.
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