If you have known me for a long time you will know that I love tea, and particularly the concept of afternoon tea. My favourite place for afternoon tea is Gunners Barracks in Mosman - on the verandah on a sunny afternoon you can check out the water, be away from people and surrounded by trees and grass all at the same time.
Unusually, in my 3 previous visits to London plus and having lived here for more than a year I still have not been to afternoon tea. One reason is the formality of it all here (whilst Gunners Barracks isn't exactly a shorts and thongs kind of place, I never felt the need to fully dress up); and the other reason is that the amount of scones and tea I've eaten here (especially at National Trust cafes) means I've never felt the need to expand this to a full on a meal like afternoon tea which always seems to be the case these days. Anyway it was time to break the afternoon tea drought and on this occasion Mr T and I paid a vist to the Landmark Hotel in Marylebone. Of all the places we could have gone, why this particular one?
- I wanted a swanky hotel just to see what it was like, but I didn't want anything that was in a stuffy and opulent but ugly room (yes I'm fussy!) The Landmark has an atrium type thing (photo below courtesy of Here is the City) which looked pretty light and airy so that was a tick for me.
- There was a chocolate afternoon tea menu which I was busting to try. We were able to order one chocolate afternoon tea and one regular afternoon tea, and there was waaaaay too much food (even if we had planned to eat this for lunch!) Looking around we were the only two people with a stand each which was slightly embarrassing, but then the waitstaff told us that if we wanted anything else (more pastries, more sandwiches) just to let them know and they would bring out. Also the afternoon tea is priced per person so its basically all you can eat afternoon tea (not that you'd want to).
General comment on high end food - is it just me or does high end food (whether it be afternoon tea or dinner or lunch) typically seem to involve a lot of oval shaped mousses made from complicated ingredients?
The sandwiches
This was a fairly standard selection with a choice of: egg, mayo and cress; chicken with tarragon crème fraîche; and smoked Scottish salmon; cucumber.
Mr T commented that they were really really tasty - probably due to the lashings of butter which we would never put on sandwiches at home :-) I do really like cucumber in a sandwich though; I think my fave was when Mrs P fed me cucumber, cream cheese and dill sandwiches for afternoon tea once. They were completely and utterly delish!!!
The pastries and sweets
We only ordered one chocolate afternoon tea for fear of being all too chocolate-d out. There is just too much chocolate, even for someone like me who likes nothing better than to sample a bunch of different flavoured and textured things to make and eat (and dream about). I think our strategy of alternating sandwiches and sweets was as effective as could be expected - even so Mr T claimed to be all sugared out by the time he finished his third pastry! I got a little further but probably only because I only sampled each sample size pastry before deciding if I liked it (and therefore went back for more). All of them were so rich it would have been impossible to eat all of them!! Here are some of the eating highlights.
Manjari chocolate mousse brownie; and Chocolate ganache with milk chocolate Chantilly and coconut nougatine
Both like eating mouthfuls of dark chocolate and I couldn't really detect much coconut
White chocolate mint shot; Star anise and milk chocolate panna cotta; and classic fruit cake with rum and Caraibe chocolate glaze
Really enjoyed the white chocolate mint shot; not such a big fan of the panna cotta. Interestingly though, there was marshmallowy texture in both the top layers, whereas they looked a little more foam like. Mr T was a fan of the fruit cake, despite it being fairly chocolatey.
Flourless pistachio sponge, fig jam and pistachio mascarpone; Lime cheesecake with vodka cranberry truffle.
The highlight of this for me was the pink vodka cranberry truffle, despite being a non-alco fan. The cheesecake was pretty easy to eat; by the end of it I was on the lookout for sweet treats that were a bit more airy or liquidy in texture.
Coco mango: coconut macaroon with mango bavarois; Chocolate and passion cream “financier”
I thought this is a great idea for a macaron. Macarons are so sweet the zing of the mango cut through nicely. Not sure what a mango bavarois is (besides another moussey thing) but Mr T thought it was a little like the mango pudding you get in chinese restaurants at yum cha... The green triangle on top is just a piece of white chocolate.
Scones
Miss M's mum taught me to make scones and I remember Miss M laughing at me for the delicate way that I rubbed butter and flour at the time (I didn't want to get knee deep in the stuff so I just used fingertips ... now I cheat and use a food processor though it doesn't come out quite as nicely as by hand). Needless to say we have moved on since then and after many years of scone making, I have pretty high expectations of scones. Mr T took the first bite and said "yours are better" - although this did give me a sinking feeling I did beam happily that Mr T prefers my scones, so it is a bit of a twisted win I guess!. The scones were a little too floury and dense and they just didn't taste fresh. I did like the strawberry conserve though which had big chunks of strawberry in them.
There were a few more things but I was too full to try them so I gave up at this point and we decided to have a rest for 10min, after which we were no better and decided it was home time.
Till next time, happy eating guys!
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