Welcome to our blog....here we will share all our afternoon tea adventures with you...the good, the bad and the wonderful!

Sunday 28 July 2013

Time for Tea..... Warren House

Hi there,

A wonderful afternoon was had today at Warren House, an elegant Victorian mansion in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey.  Rachel, Mum and I enjoyed a champagne afternoon tea with luxurious chocolate coated strawberries - a decadent addition to a traditional tea.

The china was contemporary and clean and the teas seemed to be a selection of Twinings tea bags (I'm not a tea snob and found my jasmine green tea to be very refreshing, but if you are an aficionado then this detail may be important to you) although I am unsure of the exact choices available as we were not offered a menu to peruse.

The food was delicious and the sandwiches had a home-made feel about them with a controversial hint of crust remaining.  The warm scones were delicious and we all enjoyed having our very own pot of cream to ourselves, particularly myself as although I enjoy sharing many things, food is not one of them!  The warm cakes that accompanied the scones were another variation from the norm that worked very well.

The pastries have a whole paragraph to themselves as for me they were the highlight of the afternoon.  Beautiful, bitter dark chocolate complemented rich Chantilly cream in the delicate profiteroles and the chocolate and caramel slice was to die for.  The minature carrot cupcake was moist and the shot of raspberry mousse was a refreshing, tangy alternative for your taste buds.


At £23.50 each for the classic afternoon tea, we felt this offered pretty good value as there were plenty of sweet treats and a good variety. If you want to sample the champagne afternoon tea that we had today that is slightly more expensive at £38.50 per person, but includes a glass of champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries.

Warren House provides a magnificent backdrop for your afternoon tea and and we enjoyed ours on the terrace which overlooks immaculate landscaped gardens and is a lovely place to relax the afternoon away.  It was a typical British summer's day (for all you non-Brits out there, that means it rained!) but we kept our stiff upper lips in place and stuck it out until the sunshine reemerged although we knew we could have easily been moved inside upon request.

The one problem with sitting outside was that the staff sometimes seemed to forget we were there.  However they were all charming when they were with us so maybe they were just trying to maintain an unpressurised environment, it's just a shame to run out of tea at afternoon tea.

 
However, I cannot leave you with that thought as overall our afternoon at Warren House was relaxing, pleasant and delicious.  This tea in the suburbs is definitively competition for the big city hotels.

Thank you for popping by today, we'd love it if you left us a comment to say hi!
Lorna & Rachel
Square Meal

3 comments:

Rosinda said...

I'm glad you had such a wonderful afternoon tea. The desserts do look lovely! I know what you mean about the tea bags, I don't particularly mind them, but I have a preference for loose leaf or a daintier tea bag, made of silk, maybe! Thank you for sharing!

An ika said...

The food and setting look lovely but I think making the point about the tea is good. I love tea and would drink it and if you were just going for an afternoon tea and you are a regular tea go-er I think you would not mind, but if people are going here as a special treat or occasion, I think they would be looking for the entire experience, which in my opinion, includes leaf tea and a variety of tea options.

Unknown said...

Just letting you all know that we made some upgrades last year to the tea at Warren House and loose Twinings teas are now available served in wonderful infuser pots.
Hope to see you soon!
Carolyn & the team at Warren House