Could do better ...... Novotel London City South

53-61 Southwark Bridge Road 

SE1 9HH  LONDON 

First of all I know that going to a chain hotel probably isn't the best place to choose when looking for a London Afternoon Tea - but this was a part of a Buy a Gift deal bought as a birthday present which included the Tower Bridge experience.
The Tower Bridge was absolutely brilliant walking along that walkway ! But I have used Buy a Gift many times and had great experiences or great feedback from giftees but this will make me much more cautious. 

The tea was served in the Elements restaurant, which was very quiet - there were two other couples sat in there also taking tea, but we did feel a bit lost in what was very obviously a restaurant set up for business stays and conferences - there were some nice looking areas they could have screened off or made a bit more interesting.

We were seated by the window - which we thought was a nice idea until we saw that our outlook was the car park - at one point we even had the recycling truck pull up for a while to obscure our view further!  

Our waitress, Paula, could not have been nicer and did help to make the experience better, but it was a very lacklustre affair.

Above you can see the menu, with the choice on offer - my friend doesn't eat meat so we asked for a change of sandwich from ham which was happily changed for a cheese one. My friend ordered coffee which came cold - the second cup ordered was hot when we pointed this out to Paula.

My assam tea came in a white pot, although had a tea stained spout and tea stain dribble down the pot from the spout - not a good look but was lovely and hot and strong with a tea strainer (again stained and bit bent) 

Sandwiches were very fresh with generous fillings - three each with a mix of brown and white bread.

Scones hmm - if you look at the menu it does say SCONES plural but we only had one each, small, obviously quickly heated in the oven so was a bit too crispy -  and the horror of jam in a little jar ! But there was a generous amount of cream to spread.

The most disappointing bit for us was the pastries which were obviously defrosted - the vanilla slice was soggy and still very cold in the middle, the carrot cake was lacklustre - but the eclair was tasty.  

If you take out the cost of the TowerBridge part (10.50 each) the experience was £59 for two so the tea was £38 - a reduction of £12 from the restaurant price.

This was definitely not worth the full price of £25 and only just at £19 each with no atmosphere, setting unsuitable, food only ok. 

We had tea a 3.15 and left by 4 pm - normally it takes us a couple of hours at least to work our way through tea and cakes and chatter. 

We left a tip for Paula because she was lovely and she couldn't have served us more charmingly, but there are much much better places to take tea, and I wouldn't recommend this as one of them.