Confessions of a Chocoholic
Afternoon Tea
22 PARK
LANE, LONDON, W1K 1BE
January 2015
This was a late Christmas
present for my 3 eldest nieces ( will be looking for children’s ones to take my
6 and nearly 2 year old nieces to in the next few years! ) and was a real treat
to look forward to in the second week of a cold January. It was also great
because I’d booked and paid for it before Christmas on Buy a Gift and had a 2
for 1 offer.
I arrived a little bit early
to the Podium restaurant - the staff were so welcoming - lovely Portuguese
gentleman who took my coat. I admit to being slightly biased as met
another lovely Portuguese gentleman 28 years ago when I was living and working
in Portugal, he was working in a hotel, totally charmed me , made me a coffee
and we’ve been married 26 years….
We had a chat about Portugal
as he noticed my surname and invited me to sit at the bar or I could wait on my
table. I ended up having a G & T at the bar – (good choice of gins,
disappointing tonic choice) which is a mark of how comfortable I was, despite
travelling extensively around the country for my work over the last few years,
I never drink alone and certainly never sit in a bar by myself. But the barman,
although very busy was also chatty and kept me company.
I was shown to my table
(introduced to a delightful Portuguese waitress on the way) and my nieces
arrived.
Immediately the afternoon
tea was explained to us – about the teas, the open sandwiches and the chocolate
and cakes. I think this is a really important part of the afternoon tea
experience – the anticipation of what is to come! We were also given a jug of water
and glasses without asking - a nice touch.
We were then given our
choice of 5 open sandwiches- smoked salmon & horseradish, honey roast ham
& Pommery mustard, prawn cocktail & baby gem lettuce, cucumber cream
cheese & chives, egg & cress
One of my nieces is
expecting so the lovely lady went off to ask the chef what might not be
suitable and came back with suggestions, the rest of us swapped and changed and
asked for 2 of this etc and she patiently wrote it all down and took our tea
orders - some really unusual choices and were told we could choose a
different one next time if we wanted to.
The sandwiches were
delicious – very obviously freshly prepared and made to order, each one really
flavoursome. I was a only a little dubious about the egg mayonnaise one (far
left) as the egg was a bit too finely chopped for my taste – almost granular
rather than chunky which seemed odd texture wise.
Tea was served in white teapots with white crockery and tea strainers - I
had The Hilton Royal Englishand the girls had lapsang souchon and a
green tea. We all agreed the tea was perfect temperature - annoying when its
just warm.
Ooh the
scones … a delight – fluffy, warm, scones with a choice of chocolate chip,
plain or raisin with a scrumptious praline chocolate spread and of course
clotted cream and strawberry jam.
At this point was applauding
my decision not to have lunch as our tea was at 5pm and I was already starting
to get full up!
However then came the main
event. It was so beautifully presented it seemed a crime to eat it, but
this was a meal in itself.
It’s hard to critique such
an array of delicacies – but I think the one thing I would say was that only
having one of each thing between 2 meant we had to either pick a cake or split
each in half which wasn’t always easy. We chose to split them as none of us
wanted to miss out on anything!
I would like to pretend that
I remembered these choices off by heart but I did have to go to the website to
remember exact ingredients:
Raspberry and white
chocolate pastries, Duo of chocolate cake, Miniature fancies, Raspberry and
pistachio sable , Citrus and chocolate cake with blood orange foam, White
chocolate shortbread lollypop , Mandarin and pistachio delice, Chocolate
and honeycomb macaroon and Milk chocolate griotte (never quite worked out
what griotte was!) lollypop, the top layer served on a slab of white chocolate.
My
favourite was the raspberry and pistachio sable which was exquisite but the
citrus and chocolate cake was a close second. It took us a while but we got
through it all, just not managing to finish the slab of chocolate!
The dining area was very
pleasant – had a calm but buzzy ambience, relaxing background music,
staff were attentive and helpful – always seemed to be someone ready when
you looked up to catch an eye.
The attention to detail in
the food presentation couldn’t be faulted and we had a delightful afternoon.
The 12½ % service added at the end was well worth it- I just hope the staff do
actually receive their fair share of it as they truly deserved it !
Thankyou Podium we had a
fine time and would be delighted to return !
