Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends.
Recently Lorna and I visited Quaglinos in St James, London to try their Prohibition Afternoon Tea. Dating back to 1929, Quaglinos has a 1920s look and feel, some the stylish interior to the uniform the waitresses wear, this place just oozes glamour.
Afternoon tea is served in the bar rather than the restaurant and be warned - it gets very busy. You need to book this tea in advance, and the restaurant will request credit card details from guests to guarantee the booking.
This afternoon tea begins with a cocktail from a selection of three...
I opted for the fruity "Raspberry Ricky", while Lorna went for the more masculine "Manhattan Under Smoke". Both cocktails were well made and enjoyable.
The afternoon tea stand continues with the art deco feel...
The savouries included:
Egg & baby cress, disc brioche toast
Prawn cocktail & baby gem leaf
Chicken & basil on white bread
Smoked salmon rosti
Cured ham grissini
The fairly surprising thing about the savoury items was that the majority of the items came with a toasted bread element. The rosti and brioche toast we expected to be toasted, but the white bread in the square chicken sandwich was also toasted.....and the little roll that contained the prawns was basically rock hard. Although this plate looked attractive and very appealing, it was a bit of a let down. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with a good old fashioned finger sandwich on fresh bread!
Next came the scones....
We had one each, served with butter a small blob of clotted cream and one pot (yes just one) of preserve. What you see in the photo above is literally what you get!
Ignoring the fact that there was limited dressing for our scones, once we tried to cut into them we came across another issue....they were so crumbly....
Lorna made a right mess of her scone!
Once we managed to cut into them, the scones were ok - nothing overly special though. We moved swiftly onto the sweet treats on the top tier of the stand, which looked a lot more promising....
The sweets included a varied selection:
Bitter chocolate marquise
Pear tart
Lemoncello posset
Macaroons
Crackled coffee choux
These were all ok, but probably looked a bit better than they tasted. The stand out item was the crackled coffee choux, which was light and delicately flavoured. It was so well made - I could have eaten loads of them!
This afternoon tea is available for £29.50 per person for cocktail tea or you can upgrade to a
Veuve Clicquot champagne tea £34.50 per person (includes a flute of champagne per guest). There are no refills available and although the service was good when we first arrived it went rapidly downhill as the bar filled up.
For more information about this afternoon tea visit the Quaglinos website.
Thank you for popping by today,
Rachel & Lorna
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