Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you're having a tea-riffic day!
I am pleased to share with you our first afternoon tea of 2018 - recently Lorna and I went on an afternoon tea adventure in London with Alex and Becca, visiting Amba Hotel Charing Cross for some tea and cakes!
Afternoon tea at Amba Charing Cross is served in an area called The Terrace, which is a light and airy space at the front of the hotel, above The Strand. The Terrace has high ceilings and lots of natural daylight, it is a lovely spot for a catch up over afternoon tea.
The afternoon tea was served on a traditional stand, with pretty floral china plates and teacups. It's modern, but very floral!
As there were four of us we had two stands for the group and we were told we could have more items if we wanted them - so no fighting over the cakes on the top tier! It was a very traditional afternoon tea with finger sandwiches, scones served with clotted cream and strawberry jam and then a selection of cakes.
There were four different finger sandwiches to enjoy...
The varieties included:
Free range egg & watercress on white bread (v)
Oak smoked salmon & cream cheese on granary bread
English ham & sweet mustard on brown bloomer bread
Aged Keens farmhouse Cheddar & onion chutney (v)
The sandwiches were fresh, and cut into easy to eat finger sandwiches. I particularly enjoyed the cheese and chutney sandwich although there could have been a bit more filling. I was a bit disappointed with the egg sandwich as it had an extra filling....
Yep....that's quite chunky cucumber in with my egg! I've encountered this once before and I'm still not sure I'm convinced that this is a good conversation. I love an egg sandwich and I feel the cucumber compromises both the flavour and the texture!
Moving up the cake stand we next turned our attention to the scones, we had two scones each....but not enough cream and jam (a pet hate when you need to ask for more scone dressings!).
The scones were a generous size - probably a little two big as one was enough to enjoy with a full afternoon tea. I also found the texture a little claggy, but not claggy enough not to enjoy the scone.
The jam that was served with the scone was ok - bog standard strawberry jam!
Finally we made our way to the top tier and the selection of cakes, which were rather appealing to look at because of the different colours...
The cakes were small and there were six different varieties to try, which was nice to see. We had already established that we could have additional cakes if we wanted which was nice to know (nothing worse than having to share the cakes so everyone tries everything!).
This selection wasn't to everyone's taste, and they weren't the most delicate sweets I have tried. But the flavours were at least interesting - there is a dense Brownie in there, a mango cheesecake (with a strong emphasis on the cheese), a red velvet cake, a green tea cake and another piece of brownie which was spiked with raspberry and peach . We liked the addition of peach pipette, which meant you could add as much or little peach as you liked.
Overall it was a good tea, the service was friendly and the food was all fresh. There was a good selection of teas, which catered for most tastes from black and green to herbal and fruit. The Terrace is also a lovely space to be in - you wouldn't think you were so close to a train station!
The afternoon tea starts at £29.95 for a standard tea, which for central London I think represents a good price.
For more information pop by the Amba Hotel Charing Cross' website
Have you enjoyed an afternoon tea recently? We'd love to hear all about it, leave us a comment or send us a photo on Twitter!
Thank you for popping by today,
Rachel & Lorna
