Being the sensible ladies we are we started with checking out where would be having our tea and after much wandering about (honestly the inside of the palace is just as much of a maze as the outside one is !!) we found the Fountain Restaurant ..... and it was closed for the season.
So we trotted off to the cafe , The Privy kitchen, to ask what we were to do - they didn't do afternoon tea and , we were told neither did the Tiltyard Cafe - it was a seasonal thing.
Not to be deterred, clutching my voucher, we went to the Tiltyard - which was a light airy self service cafe and asked what we should do with our voucher . After much conferring they said they would make us a tea but would need to let them know when as it would need preparing - we opted for a time later on and went off to enjoy our visit. It's a great place to go and the good thing about it being October and a Saturday wasn't many visitors and no school parties, so we had a great day wandering around the exhibits and rooms. Would thoroughly recommend it if you've never been !
And then we went for our tea - The Cafe was super busy but they had prepared a lovely spread, really fresh sandwiches - no balking when we told them sorry we had forgotten to say one of us was veggie, brought different sandwiches, changed one of the pots of tea for coffee, and really made the effort to make it feel like it was a proper afternoon tea , serving us at our table while everyone else was queueing up for food, offering to top up drinks, checking our food was ok etc.
The food came on a super cute stand, and although not huge amounts of food was plenty for us. We saw several people staring and pointing and asking at the counter if they could have afternoon tea too ! (they were told no!)
The sandwiches were really generously filled and very fresh - chicken, cheese and pickle, egg mayonnaise, cheese and ham.
We had one huge scone each (they were forgiven for the plastic pot of cream and the jar of jam as the scone was so delicious and fluffy )
Finished with a very rich gooey brownie and a lemony tart (think it might have a been a Hampton Court speciality Queen of tarts which involves potato in his ingredients but not sure)
The tea came in white china pots and milk jug so I was happy !
All in all I was very impressed that they pulled this out of the hat and really tried to make it an experience - certainly much more effort put in than other recent teas. I'm not sure about cost as it came as part of a package but considering its wasn't actually on their menu or expected it was very well done.
Thanks Tiltyard cafe - a great effort and a very nice end to our day.
