Mad Hatters Tea Party at The Sanderson Hotel

I quite like a spot of afternoon tea now and again - i mean, who can resist just out of the oven scones with lots of clotted cream and jam?
The best afternoon teas i have had in London would be the Langham and the Ritz - both with to die for scones :-)

This time i went with 2 girlfriends to the Sanderson hotel for the Mad Hatters tea party

What a popular place - when we arrived if felt like it was a Saturday evening at 10 pm - not a Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm. Lots of (mostly) women dressed up in cocktail dresses sipping champagne.

It was busy but staff were very friendly and organised. I loved the look of the afternoon tea and the lovely touches like the sugar box and tea choices but it was a little bit of style over substance. The sandwiches were not great - just lots of bread and hardly any filling - the best one was the salmon on rye.

Same goes for the mushroom marshmallows and meringue carrots.. looked great but lacking in flavor.
The mini sweet and savoury scones were great and the green tea /white chocolate mousse was also very good. I also loved the "drink me" potion.. :-)

The other good thing was that they happily refilled anything that you wanted more of - and you could also switch to a different tea/coffee if you wanted - nice touch.

We had a great time and the damage was £38 for the afternoon tea per person (or £48 with a glass of champagne or £58 for a glass of rose champagne)

Sketch - the return - 20 April 2013

So, i took my friend Karin to Sketch back in March as part of her birthday present and i was slightly disappointed with the experience and the quality of the pastries.
I got an email asking me to review the afternoon tea and i basically wrote down what i thought was good and not so good. To my surprise i then got an email from the manager who was concerned about the feedback and he invited us to come back again and have a complimentary glass of champagne & cake.
Nice to know that feedback actually gets read. I booked us in to go and claim our champers & cake following our lunch at Asia de Cuba earlier in the day.
On arrival we asked to be seated in "The Parlour" which is situated on the ground floor and is much more intimate than the Gallery where we were last time.
The staff had been informed about our complimentary booking and handled everything perfectly. We had some lovely chilled champagne, cappuchino and a choice of cake from the display.
I went for "London to Paris" which was a Pate a choux filled with praline cream, caramelised hazelnuts and a vanilla whipped cream. Light and lovely.  Karin went for a very decadent "Gateaux Chocolate" a lovely chocolate sponge cake filled with layers of chocolate mouse, coconut mousse and passion fruit ganache.. rich and lovely. So if you are ever out and about around Regent/Oxford street - pop in to Sketch to top up your enery levels and rest your shopping weary legs. All cakes are £5.50 a pop.

The Langham - Wonderland afternoon tea - 31st of July

What is more English than traditional afternoon tea? Such a great invention! However, should only be had in moderation since you probably consume enough calories to last you for 3 days!


Since my partners parents were visiting from Germany we decided to book in for afternoon tea at the Langham in London. http://london.langhamhotels.co.uk/restaurants/palm_court.htm

They have an amazing afternoon tea menu called "Wonderland" based on the famous Alice of course :-)

The Palm court room where the tea is served is stunning with lots of muted colours, glass and gold. There is also a man playing piano during the afternoon - very civilised indeed.

The tea menu is as long a a wine list in a restaurant and it is quite fun to read about all the different tea's. I decided on a "Lychee red" with was delicious.

We got a little welcome treat of "vanilla pannacotta with pineapple and lemon grass".. very nice and very moorish.


We started off with the finger sandwiches, there were 5 different kinds of sandwiches including egg & cress, chicken & tarragon, cucumber & cream cheese, tuna & sweetcorn and salmon & horseradish. I was so hungry that i forgot to take a photo at this point (i only had a small breakfast and no lunch in order to prepare for the calories ahead).

We then moved on to some wonderful, and still warm from the oven scones. There were 2 kinds, with raisins or without served with strawberry jam and clotted cream. Lovely!


However, we could not over indulge in the scones since we still had the lovely wonderland pastries to eat.

We had some amazing little almond madeleines topped with a pistagio cream and fresh raspberries - my favorite! There were also orange carrot cakes with a violet glaze and edible gold, white chocolate and strawberry eclairs and shortbread lollipops. The latter were quite boring but looked great.



We walked out of the Langham clutching our bellies.. but it was worth it!