Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you're having an excellent day.
Last week Lorna and I decided to treat ourselves to our first afternoon tea of 2017 - we decided we wanted to visit somewhere we hadn't been before.....and we wanted some champagne with our tea! We have featured the Jumeirah Carlton Tower afternoon tea on the blog before, but only as a news article, their afternoon tea offerings always look enticing so we decided to pay them a visit.
Afternoon tea is served in Chinoiserie, an informal dining space in the lobby of the hotel. It's an elegant space, but it gets busy so make sure you book ahead if you want to experience afternoon tea here. We opted to enjoy their champagne afternoon tea.....which I think you'll agree looks rather lovely....
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| Afternoon tea - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
There is a good selection of teas to pick from and the servers are happy to help you with your selection. Our champagne was served with a small bowl of strawberries, which all arrived before the tea stand.
Every item on the tea stand was explained to us, with the waiter enthusiastically talking about each treat. We were informed that we could have second helpings if we wanted.
So far so good! Now let's take a closer look at the savoury items....
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| Afternoon tea - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
The selection included:
Roast rib of Aberdeen Angus in a brioche bun with watercress and creamed horseradish
Loch Fyne smoked salmon bridge roll with citrus and chive cream cheese
Keens cheddar on wholemeal bread with spiced tomato chutney
Although the rolls were a little larger than standard finger sandwiches they were so light in texture they didn't leave you feeling too full. All the bread was fresh and the fillings in proportion. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the cheese sandwich (I had more than one!) - testament to simple things being great! I also loved that they had rounded the corners of the bread...
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| Afternoon tea savouries - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
After the savoury items we moved onto the scones....which were huge....
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| Afternoon tea scones - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
We had two plain and two fruit each, served with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Despite their size, these scones had such a lovely, light texture - not even a hint of clagginess!
The scones didn't crumble as you cut them and had a good flavour.
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| Can you see Lorna in the background dressing her scone? |
Finally we made it to my favourite bit of afternoon tea....the sweet treats, which were nestled in the middle of this cake stand at perfect eye level.
The cakes were all attractive in appearance, I liked the variety of shapes and colours and couldn't wait to tuck in! The selection included:
Jaffa chocolate delice with caramelised hazelnuts and kumquat confit
Mini mango and lime dome, coconut macaroon
White chocolate and passion fruit éclair
Blackberry and apple meringue tart
(is your mouth watering yet??)
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| Afternoon tea - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
We decided to work our way across the stand from left to right, saving the mango and line dome until last as it sounded amazing!
Each sweet treat was well made and tasted fresh. The flavours were well balanced both within each item and across the cake stand, I love the fruit theme.
I loved the lightness of the eclair, the white chocolate worked so well with the passion fruit. Again the pastry was light and non-intrusive, and I loved the appearance of the eclair....
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| Afternoon tea - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
My least favourite item was the Blackberry and apple meringue tart as I couldn't really taste the apple, but I loved the pastry which was light and buttery and it looked so pretty with glitter on the blackberries.....
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| Afternoon tea - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
The Jaffa chocolate delice was scrummy, I love chocolate and orange as a flavour combo! The flavours were light and not at all artificial and despite being quite large this sweet treat was incredibly light in texture....
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| Afternoon tea - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
Finally we had the mango and lime dome, which was definitely my favourite.
w on reflection I thought the flavours were passion fruit and lime rather than mango (not sure what that says about my taste bud!), but that still doesn't alter my opinion of this sweet treat. It was light in texture and full of flavours that weren't over powering. The coconut macaroon on the bottom complimented the dome well and there was the cutest mini macaroon on the top....
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| Afternoon tea - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
The service in Chinoiserie left us a little confused - it took a while to get someones attention, but when you did everything happened really quickly. So, I can't really say that the service was slow, it was just a little disjointed. All the waiting staff were really friendly and made us feel very welcome.
We would definitely visit Jumeirah Carlton Tower for afternoon tea again, the whole experience was relaxing and the food was wonderful.
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| Afternoon tea - Jumeirah Carlton Tower |
For more information about the afternoon tea at Jumeirah Carlton Tower pop by their website.
Thank you for popping by today,
Rachel and Lorna
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