So as promised here is my cake report, fresh from an afternoon spent face first in a bunch of them as I sampled afternoon tea at The Savoy Hotel, London.
You know this is a posh place because the ladies loos look like this.
Drink enough tea and you’ll be seeing that lady several times.
There’s also a live pianist in the dedicated afternoon tea lounge playing music from the movies like Chariots of Fire and Love Story. Very classy.
Afternoon tea at The Savoy starts with a selection of crustless sandwiches and freshly baked scones with clotted cream, jam and lemon curd. The scones even come with their own little blanket to protect them all the ills of the world.
Those are the vegetarian sandwiches – a mix of egg, cheese and hummus with roasted peppers on bread that was definitely not sliced white.
It’s served with one of over 20 varieties of tea (or you could go hog wild and have coffee). I had the Savoy Afternoon Blend tea, a very pleasant and light loose leaf black tea topped up by our personal tearista all afternoon. It has totally spoilt me for Tetley One Cup.
Then it’s on to the first lot of cakes, served on specially designed Wedgewood plates. At this point I did let you down because, lovely as they were, after the scones and the sandwiches I could only manage half.
Also I was pacing myself because this bad boy was coming next:
That’s a pretty serious chocolate cake alright.
Between that and all the tea I was practically spherical by the time we’d finished. You can have as many refills of tea, cake and sandwiches as you want but even though each item is quite delicate, there’s a limit to how much you can pack away. Trust me, it was all as delicious as it looks.
If you want to go to afternoon tea at The Savoy I would definitely recommend booking because it was constantly busy, even on a Tuesday afternoon.
Or if you can’t make it, here’s a little film to make you drool:
Many thanks to Olivia from Travel de la Creme for showing this geek the finer side of life.