All posts tagged: afternoon tea

Staying at The Malabar, Cumbria

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Over the May Bank Holiday, we treated ourselves to a staycation. We started our trip in the Lake District at The Forest Side in Grasmere (you can read about our stay here) before hopping over to the Dales (on the border with Cumbria), around half an hour away. Here we were staying at The Malabar, a B&B which we’d come across on Mr & Mrs Smith which we fell in love with from the second we saw it online. It was established in 2015 by Graham and Fiona Lappin. Despite having never lived in the area or run their own business before, they took on the project of converting Garths Farm into the wonderful B&B it is today. But it wasn’t all a completely new prospect – Fiona’s family had worked in the hotel business, although she had carved a successful career in publishing. Graham grew up in the southern Indian state of Kerala where his father and grandfather were tea planters, although his career had been in banking in the UK, Hong Kong and India. …

Chocolate Week Afternoon Tea at The Langham with Cherish Finden

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Chocolate Week seemed to come around very quickly this year! Last year you might have read my round-up of The Chocolate Show – if not, you can take a peek here. This year, I was very excited to be invited to try out the Chocolate Afternoon Tea hosted at Palm Court within The Langham Hotel. You may have read my review of Michel Roux Jr’s ‘Roux at the Landau‘ which is in the same beautiful hotel, so I was delighted to return! The centre piece of The Langham, London,  the dazzling Palm Court, is famed as the place where the tradition of afternoon tea was born 150 years ago! As soon as you step inside, you immediately feel relaxed and at home, while surrounded by beautiful, luxurious decor. We were greeted with a glass of Laurent-Perrier Brut before making our tea choice. We were advised to try the 150th Anniversary Langham Blend, which is officially the most complex tea blend in the world, with a unique combination of 150 ingredients! Created by the ‘Master of Tea’ Alex Probyn, …

Icing Easter ‘Biskies’ at Cutter & Squidge, Soho

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Last week I discovered the ‘biskie’.  You run the risk of sounding like a toddler trying to pronounce ‘biscuit’ when saying it, but this is actually a delicious hybrid of biscuit, cake and cookie, filled  with light buttercream! It’s the brainchild of sisters Annabel and Emily Lui who started out selling them at Partidge’s food market in 2013 under the name ‘Cutter and Squidge’, and after successful commissions for Selfridges and Harrods, ending up taking full time residence at a shop/cafe in the heart of Soho. I was invited to a biskie masterclass at Cutter and Squidge, and for some reason I thought we would actually be baking biskies, but in fact we we trying (yum!) and icing them (fun!). It makes sense – I can’t imagine they’re going to be giving up their recipe for someone to copy and time soon. Because they’re really good! I was led downstairs to the very cute ‘secret garden,’ filled with vines, hanging fruits and flowers, designed by Callum Lumsden. We started off trying some ‘mini’ biskies’ in a …

Halloween Afternoon Tea at Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium, Shoreditch

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You remember that online dating video that went viral, where a woman declared her love for cats? And then the mashup video, turning it into a song, which also proceeded to go viral? If you don’t, where have you been? Here it is in all its glory: I’m pretty sure it’s all staged, but it still makes me giggle all the same. “I just want to hug all of them, but I can’t hug every cat” resonates with me. I love them! You may have read on here that after nearly 7 years of living together, Tim and I finally got our first kitten this summer, as we bought a house that we felt would be suitable for a cat to live in (our previous tiny East London flat wouldn’t really have been fair) and we just adore him. I was there therefore very excited to be invited to a Halloween Afternoon Tea at Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium in Shoreditch. For those who don’t know about it, it’s London’s first ‘cat cafe’ and opened up …

August 2015: A house, a kitten, and lots of blogging!

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Hello all! As I’m posting quite a lot on the blog now, I thought it might be nice to do a little round-up of the things I’ve written about at the end of each month, collated in one post. So here’s my first one for August! And it has been a busy month! We exchanged, completed and moved into our very first house in Tooting, and at the weekend, we got our first kitten, Dexter (yes, named after the TV show serial killer!) A month of firsts, big expenditure and lots and lots of packing boxes (which Dexter seems to be having a lot of fun with!) I’ve still somehow managed to keep up with blogging, alongside my day job, so here’s what I wrote about on the blog this month! Restaurants/Pop-ups I visited… I visited a very cool Berlin Brunch pop-up in London. Read more here. I tucked into gourmet sandwiches, salads and puds at Aline in Mayfair (possibly the most I’ve ever eaten in one sitting!). Read more here. For Afternoon Tea Week, I tried …

Gluten-Free Afternoon Tea at 108 Pantry

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Did you know that this week is Afternoon Tea Week? I’ve been to quite a few Afternoon Teas across the UK now (mostly in London), many of which I’ve written about on here, but I still have a fairly extensive list of places I’d love to visit. At the weekend, I was invited to Afternoon Tea at 108 Pantry within The Marylebone Hotel. And I was particularly looking forward to the fact that they offer a ‘gluten-free’ option, which I’ve never come across before. I’m not intolerant to gluten but I was interested to see how the products would compare to the ‘classic’ versions and be able to report back to you on here. I wrote my first gluten-free related post on here last week and it got a pretty good response, so there’s obviously a lot of interest in the subject. New research by Udi’s Gluten Free (which I was given today) has found that the top struggle of those who are gluten-intolerant is ‘eating out in a restaurant’. The recent introduction of the EU’s Food …

Throwback Thursday: Afternoon Tea at Harrods

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This week’s Throwback Thursday post is my experience of Afternoon Tea with my mum at Harrods. It feels like yesterday but it was a year and a half ago now – my mum was on holiday in the UK, partly to see ‘the wedding dress’ before I bought it, and to get the Mrs Rex seal of approval 😉  I had arranged for us to go for Afternoon Tea at Harrods as a belated Mother’s Day treat, as part of an action packed day of dress trying on, shopping, cocktails and seeing Phantom of The Opera in the West End. It was a fabulous day, with taxis from place to place. I think my mum thinks this is how I live all the time! We arrived at Harrods and got lost fairly quickly, which happens every time I go there. It really is a labyrinth of luxury, but I can’t help but feel there must be an easier way of navigating it. I must be missing a trick somewhere. Luckily the restaurant was easy to find, …

Afternoon Tea at Bettys, Harrogate

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As you may have read in this previous blog post, I recently spent the weekend up in North Yorkshire where my mum lives, and where I grew up as a child.  On my last day, before begrudgingly catching the train back down to London, we decided to go for Afternoon Tea at Bettys Tearoom in Harrogate. I had taken my mum to Afternoon Tea at Harrods last year as a Mother’s Day treat and we enjoyed it so much – I think it’s a lovely way for mums and daughters to have cake and a catch-up! Apparently Afternoon Tea was first invented by The Langham Hotel in London and they are marking the 150th anniversary this year.     Bettys is highly regarded across the globe and at weekends, you will often find a queue around the corner of the building, with tourists from all over the world paying a visit. It was founded by Frederick Belmont, a Swiss baker and confectioner who came to England in search of opportunities to develop his craft skills. …

Le Tea en Rose: Afternoon Tea at Sofitel St James Hotel

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I adore afternoon tea, having been to a number in the past few years, which I’ve been meaning to blog about for some time in one of my Throwback Thursday posts. I mean, what’s not to love about Afternoon Tea? Lots of sandwiches with different fillings to try, fluffy scones with various toppings, and cakes galore! With the widest range of tea you could possibly ask for! So I was very excited when I was invited to an exclusive preview of ‘Le Tea en Rose’ Afternoon Tea at the Sofitel St James Hotel, marking the arrival of Spring and the Chelsea Flower Show. The hotel, located at Waterloo Place, is beautifully decorated by French interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon, and The Rose Lounge is a tea lover’s dream! As some of you will know, I’m a bit of a Francophile and studied Renaissance France at university, so I was certainly in my happy place!     We were introduced to the Afternoon Tea by Julie from Dammann Frères. The business was established in France in 1925 but has been …