Afternoon tea at Grosvenor House

86-90 Park Lane London W1K 7TN

The Park Room and Library has been recognised as among ‘Britain’s Best Afternoon Tea’ destinations by the prestigious Tea Guild (constitutive awards from 2008-2011). Typically "Anna's tea"costs £34.50 per person. However, as part of a deal from Groupon both me and M had the very good opportunity to have tea for two for £20 - with the only restriction being the tea selection (Twinings only). Anna's afternoon tea takes place in The Park Room of the Park Lane Marriott hotel.

When you first enter the first thing you see is an elegant flower display. My first general impression was that the room was a bit dim ..but yet too bright near the windows. However, the waiters did try to adjust the blinds every so often. We were first greeted by a rather stone faced hostess, polite but not particularly friendly who escorted us to our table.

The Park Room

Although, the hostess a tad cold. Our waiter was lovely. First to arrive was an amuse bouche - a fruit coctail made of dragon fruit, lychee, melon and some other excotic fruits. This was quite sweet but refreshing.

Amuse bouche fruit coctail

Unlimited tea was avaliable but one tea pot of tea for the each of us was quite enough.

Tea: Twinings Pure Ceylon tea

In contrast to the Ritz, there was more choice of spreads. Here we had the choice of honey, in addition to strawberry jam and clotted cream.

Spreads (from left): Honey, strawberry jam, clotted cream

The entire set, including the pastries, scones and sandwiches arrived in one go.

The pastries were very pretty, but like the Ritz, didn't taste particularly spectacular. I liked the fact the chocolate eclair had chocolate cream filling rather than the standard cream. The victoria sponge cake was a bit hard. The best thing was the lemon moose thing.

Pastries (clockwise): Chocolate eclair with choclate cream filling; Opera gateau; Raspberry tart; Victoria sponge cake; Vanilla mille-feuille; Raspberry and pistachio slice; lemon moose

The scones reminded me of scones you find in America. The texture was more crunchy/crumbly and a lot more buttery than the soft/stoggy texture of a typical English scone. These were still yummy, but the ones in the Ritz are probably nicer as these were too rich.

Scones: Plain and raisin buttermilk scones

The sandwiches were, overall, delicious! My favourite had to be the prawn/mayo. The chicken came second - moist and flavoursome. The beef sandwich was not so impressive - rather tasteless, probably needs more horseradish for the amount of beef in the sandwich. Too much cucumber in the cucumber sandwich. The egg sandwich was a tad dry, could potentially do with more sauce. The salmon sandwich was standard, but still yummy. We were offered more sandwiches but we declined because were were just frankly stuffed!

Sandwiches (clockwise): Smoked salmon with cream cheese and dill; Coldwater prawns with marie rose sauce; chicken with tarragon; Eggs with mayonaise and cress; Sirloin beef with  creamed horseradish; Cucumber with mint butter.

Overall, we both really enjoyed ourselves. The food was probably slightly better compared to the Ritz, but didn't have that fantastic Ritz 'wow' factor - ambiance does play a big part in eating out. Our waitress was lovely, but otherwise the staff are possibly slightly more stuck-up here than in the Ritz.

Food = 6.5/10
Service = 7/10
Atmosphere = 7/10
Recommend? Yes

Tea at the Ritz

The Ritz London, 150 Piccadilly, London W1J 9BR

Afternoon tea is a quintessentially British tradition so, as part of T’s birthday, we decided to treat ourselves and after 3 months waiting, we finally had our grand afternoon tea at the Ritz (May 2011). Tea is served five times a day; 11.30am, 1.30pm, 3.30pm, 5.30pm and 7.30pm. We went for the 11.30 sitting on a Saturday.

Traditional Afternoon Tea (£40 per person) 

Afternoon tea at the Ritz takes place in the Palm Court – a wonderfully grand and elegant room, beautifully furnished with a definite ‘wow’ factor. Although spectacular, it was much smaller than we had expected with probably less than 20 tables altogether (mainly for 2-4 people, though there were two larger groups of about 6-8). Nonetheless, beautiful.

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The Ritz London: Palm court

It is recommended that you arrive 10 minutes earlier but thanks to the very reliable London Underground (!!), we were just on time (if only a few minutes late). Despite this, we were warmly greeted and shown to our seats. We were seated by the room’s entrance, not ideal but fine.

Palm court: our table

Condiments: clotted cream, strawberry jam and sugar cubes

Once seated, we looked through the menu which offered a wide selection of tea. You can try as many teas as you like, but with the large volume of tea in each pot, we only tried 3 different types of overall. To start, we ordered the elderflower tea and the ceylon orange pekoe tea and later the rose congou tea. The tea arrived quickly and was served in very old fashioned silverware. Unfortunately one of the teapots was broken, so whenever we attempted to pour tea into the cup, it would leak all over the table. But once we informed the waiter, they were quick to replace teapot and subtely placed a napkin over the tea soaked tablecloth. Interestingly enough, he explained that the silverware was more than 100 years old so was prone to some problems!

Once our tea arrived, they bought a 3 tier cake stand. The top contained pastries, the middle was empty (for the scones and fruit cake which would arrive later) and the bottom was sandwiches.



Cake stand with pastries (top) and sandwiches (bottom)



Pastries: (clockwise) fruit tart, hazelnut macaroon, cream pastry with icing, some kind of hazelnut mousse, chocolate cake and a maple syrup cupcake



Sandwiches: Cheddar Cheese Sandwich with Chutney on Onion Bread, Scottish Smoked Salmon with Lemon Butter on Rye Bread, Chicken Breast Sandwich with Horseradish Cream, Cucumber Sandwich with Cream Cheese, Dill, and Chives on Caraway Seed Bread, Egg Mayonnaise Sandwich with Chopped Shallots and Watercress, Ham Sandwich with Grain Mustard Mayonnaise on White Bread

The cheese sandwich was exceptionally yummy, really delicious, but the rest was rather mediocre. We weren’t particularly keen on the chicken sandwich which was too creamy/buttery for our liking and the egg mayonnaise sandwich was quite bland. The pastries looked lovely and tasted ok, but not as nice as we expected.



Hazelnut mousse



The scones arrived: Plain and raisin scones, with two slices of fruit cake.

The scones were nice. They had a softer and lighter texture than the typical texture of scones you might buy from Sainsbury! The scones went very well with the jam and clotted cream. You can request more food, but it was enough for the two of us and we were definitely stuffed by the end of it. Although the food was slightly disappointing, the whole atmosphere and service was amazing. Throughout the sitting, there was a pianist playing both classical and contemporary music and requests could be made. Actually, due to the size of the room, the piano was just outside the Palm Court which might make it difficult to hear amongst the chatter if you were further inside the room. So actually being seated near the edge was quite fortunate as we had no problem enjoying the music!



Pianst in the background - adds to the atmosphere of the Ritz.

Overall, we had a very nice time. The service was wonderful - the waiters weren't snobbish at all (which you might expect from a top hotel) and the whole grand atmosphere was...well, grand! We had a lovely time there, truly a once in a life time experience.

Atmosphere 9.5/10

Service 9/10

Food 6.5/10

Recommended? Yes, definitely