This article is part of a guide to London from FT Globetrotter
Skyline Afternoon Tea at Ting in the Shangri-La, The Shard
Level 35, Shangri-La The Shard, 31 St Thomas Street, London SE1 9QU
There’s nothing more reviving for a Londoner than doing something incredibly touristy that makes you look at the city afresh. That, and a good cup of tea. So it is that I find myself having excellent cups of tea 35 floors up The Shard, a slice of skyscraper that you can see from just about anywhere in town but which I’d never previously visited.
The Shangri-La hotel’s “Skyline” Jubilee-themed tea (£65 per person) is served in its fancy Asian restaurant lounge, Ting. There are valiant attempts to boost the royal factor: Ting’s dedicated lift has been plastered with a giant photograph of Balmoral, the Queen’s Highland residence, and there are photos of Her Maj in the lobby and floral displays by top London florist McQueens (of course). It’s all rather romantic and I remind my husband that McQueens did the flowers at our long ago non-royal wedding.
We don’t get the plum seats with a view of the West End or City, but are instead placed directly above London Bridge station, with its railway tracks stretching far into south-east London. It’s an unconventional view but I like it, and the tea, when it starts to arrive, is a similarly mixed bag.
Some so-so finger sandwiches to start, some better savoury tarts — and then a very pleasing tower of unusual pâtisserie. My favourite is what the hotel blurb gushingly describes as “The Pearl of the Queen — a pearlescent tonka, vanilla and strawberry gateaux [sic]”. It tastes good, anyway. The tea menu is so long that I have to go for an Earl Grey because I can’t cope with the choice. Non tea-lovers can have a glass of English Nyetimber sparkling wine (£11 extra).
But nobody is in any doubt about the star turn here. The staff hang on for customers to get their phones ready when a chocolate recreation of The Shard arrives at each table on a plinth and liquid nitrogen is poured around it to create a smoky sensation. The journalist in me sees a problem with the optics of a smoke-filled skyscraper, even a chocolate one, but the “oooh” factor is major and the edifice, once cracked open, is filled with mousse and tastes delicious.
We are so full by this time that we can’t do justice to the demolished Shard or to a more conventional teatime selection of mini-scones, jam and clotted cream. The attentive staff box up what’s left. Then it’s back into the ear-popping royal lift — and on to the Tube. We’ve become Londoners again. Daily, noon–4pm, until September 30. (Website; Directions)
— Isabel Berwick, Work & Careers editor
Prêt-à-Portea Platinum Jubilee Edition at The Berkeley
Wilton Place, London SW1X 7RL
“Oh, the Berkeley’s afternoon tea is quite special,” a friend said when I told her of my plans for the afternoon. “Isn’t all afternoon tea basically the same?” I responded. The formula hasn’t evolved much in the tradition’s near 200-year history: sandwiches, sweets, scones — and tea. Job done.
The Berkeley, however, offers a twist with its high-fashion take on afternoon tea — “Prêt-à-Portea” — which is now in its 17th year. “It began because we wanted to do something a bit quirky and different,” head pastry chef Mourad Khiat told me. Every six months as a new fashion season begins, Khiat selects a handful of the hottest items from the catwalk, and transforms the designs into beautiful, edible sweets — irresistible fodder for the Instagram generation. One of his favourite creations in recent years was of Jacquemus’s Le Chiquito, the itty-bitty It bag that debuted for spring/summer 2018. “Customers would have them on the table and they were almost the same size as the sweet version they were eating,” he said with a laugh.
For the Platinum Jubilee, the luxury Knightsbridge hotel is paying tribute to “the ultimate fashionista”, Her Majesty the Queen (it starts at £79 per person). It begins with the hotel’s usual offering of savouries (which can be vegan or vegetarian if desired): a lovely heritage tomato salad with a white asparagus velouté, a slice of smoked duck breast on crispy laminated brioche and an assortment of tasty sandwiches.
The sweets represent the monarch’s sartorial signatures: a crown, naturally, crafted in vanilla biscuit; a summer hat, constructed with lime cheesecake, lemon compote and almond sponge (my favourite), and a Launer London handbag, the Queen’s longtime accessory of choice, made out of blueberry sponge sandwiched with chocolate. All share the cakewalk with a Gucci tuxedo, Schiaparelli dress and a coconut cake with lychee mousse inspired by Saint Laurent’s spring jumpsuits. The skill and precision with which they are crafted is extraordinary. They taste delicious too.
The tea menu is vast (and unlimited); my server recommended a black tea for the savoury course and a lighter one for the puds. I opted for the vanilla black to start, a creamy, naturally sweet blend, and a wonderful jasmine tea for dessert. I was surprised with how well each complemented the food.
As Khiat explained the work behind the Jubilee menu — he has been testing and refining his recipes since January — we noticed that Sarah Ferguson was sitting directly across from me. (Perhaps a dining room to the west of Buckingham Palace, munching on regal couture, is the closest she can get to royalty these days.) As I chuckled at the absurdity of seeing Duchess Fergie and bit into HM’s biscuit millinery, the finale arrived: a chocolate wafer cone filled with fruit compote, topped with pineapple sorbet and tempered chocolate, inspired by a Richard Quinn gown. It is with this that Prêt-à-Portea comes full circle — Quinn’s February 2018 show was the only time the Queen has attended London Fashion Week. Daily, 1–5.30pm, May 30–June 12 (Website; Directions)
— Niki Blasina, FT Globetrotter deputy editor
Platinum Jubilee Afternoon Tea at the InterContinental London Park Lane
1 Hamilton Place, Park Lane, London W1J 7QY
The jubilee-themed afternoon tea has become a bit of a thing. Aside from the hotels off Piccadilly serving HM-inspired cakes and sandwiches, midway through our afternoon at the InterContinental Park Lane I noticed two busloads of tea-takers shunting around the roundabout at Hyde Park Corner on a “Platinum Jubilee Afternoon Tea Tour”. Not one for the easily carsick, I thought from my seat in the hotel’s calm and cream-coloured Wellington Lounge. “I like to think we were one of the first,” Rado Georgiev told me after bringing out the pastries. The hotel’s Bulgarian head pastry chef researched the Queen’s favourite foods before helping design the menu: a traditional three-course affair, comprising flamboyant sandwiches, fresh scones and aggressively rich little cakes.
Tea at the InterContinental comes at £48 per person, or £65 if you add in a glass of champagne or the hotel’s Platinum Jubilee cocktail, a fine concoction of Earl Grey-infused gin, Drambuie and ginger wine, served with a rock of ice the size of a Rubik’s cube.
And you get rather a lot for your money. You can order more of any of the savouries — though after five sandwiches, two scones and four cakes (not to mention the bottomless pots of 22 teas and infusions), good luck cramming too much more in. My wife ordered another round of the venison sandwiches — a neatly made rectangle of lightly toasted bread, topped with waves of pink-centred meat folded over an earthy truffle and mushroom chutney — and had to ask to take the last cake and a half home in a box.
It’s all highly Instagrammable, which is half the point. My joint favourite savouries — a three-inch salmon rillettes eclair and a trout pâté and caviar sandwich served between vermilion-coloured slices of bread — were suitably show-offy, as was the red-gloss, domed délice made from strawberries and English sparkling wine. Thurs–Sun, 1–5pm, until June 26. (Website; Directions)
— Nathan Brooker, House & Home editor
The Goring Jubilee Afternoon Tea
15 Beeston Place, London SW1W 0JW
A short stroll (or carriage ride) from the gates of Buckingham Palace, The Goring is the royalest of all London hotels. So much so, it was granted a royal warrant by Her Majesty in 2013, an honour bestowed to those who supply goods or services to the various royal households. The royals have used it rather as an extension of the palace since it opened in 1910. Guests from around the world piled in for the coronation of George VI; the Queen Mother used to enjoy eggs Drumkilbo, a rich lobster and egg confection that is still on the menu today. The Middleton party famously took over the hotel in 2011 the night before Wills ’n’ Kate’s nuptials. There is even a rumour of a secret tunnel . . .
Small and discreet, with lashings of traditional charm, The Goring is big with Americans, who are starting to flood back in. So it is only natural that the hotel is going all out for the biggest and best Platinum Jubilee tea in the capital — and, I daresay, it deserves the crown.
We secured the last spot for a Sunday 2pm sitting, a little early perhaps for tea for some, but perfect for a glass of pink Bollinger, included in the £75 menu (without champagne it starts at £60). Spring sunshine flooded the hotel’s bright conservatory, bouncing off the silver tea service and the blinding white tablecloths, so much so that we sheepishly moved to a table in the shade.
Without further ado, our tiered confections were delivered, and we were instructed to begin at the beginning — the finger sandwiches, of course — and work our way upwards. They were a fine mix of coronation chicken, roast sirloin beef, cucumber and cream cheese and smoked salmon and capers, and no sooner had we finished our first round than they were quickly replenished, dangerously waylaying us on our way up the tier. Homemade sausage rolls further delayed proceedings.
The middle tier — the one I was most excited about — is given over to the centrepiece of any decent afternoon tea: the scone. A little too immaculate for my liking but winningly adorned with a glazed profile of the Queen, with accompanying ice-cream-scoops of clotted cream and both raspberry and strawberry jam, they did not disappoint.
Our fellow diners — an animated mix of Italians, Scandinavians and Americans — seemed, ill-advisedly, to have swerved this middle layer, going straight to the top tier: a minty macaron with an HM seal, a dainty strawberry tart adorned with a chocolate crown, a mini lemon posset and a rich chocolate slice.
We languished for as long as we decently could over our pot of silver needle white tea, unable to move. Was this afternoon tea? Or lunch and dinner? When the bill came for well over £200 for four, we decided that it must be breakfast, lunch and dinner. Luckily, with much of our second round of sandwiches and a few half-eaten cakes packaged up in a doggy bag, we left with supper fit for a pack of corgis. Mon–Fri, 3.30pm, 4pm, 4.30pm and 5.00pm; Sat, 1–4pm; Sun, 1–5pm, until September 1. (Website; Directions)
— Rebecca Rose, FT Globetrotter editor
What’s your go-to destination for afternoon tea in London? Tell us in the comments
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