Afternoon Tea Adventures; Fortnum And Mason, London

I think it’s safe to say I like afternoon tea and the best part for me is the buckets of tea that are there to be drunk.  My favourite tea is from Fortum and Mason.  For me they really do have the most delightful tea and I feel tea always needs to be loose leaf and always needs to be made in a pot.  We had arrived a little earlier than our afternoon tea was booked for and while we waited we had a look around the shop.  I really love the store and the aroma of all of the loose tea and could spend hours walking around smelling the leaf tea.

The sandwiches tasted so fresh and included:

• Coronation Chicken
• Fortnum’s Smoked Salmon
• Glazed Ham with English Mustard
• Cucumber with Mint & Lemon Butter
• Rare Breed Hen’s Egg Mayonnaise with Chives

The warm scones (plain and fruit) were served with Somerset Clotted Cream & Fortnum & Mason strawberry preserve and lemon curd.  The jars were of a larger size than I’ve had before and at the eand of the tea the uneaten preserves were given to us to take home.

The scones were followed by a selection of five individual patisseries.

Finally it was time to make a choice of only for a mason sweet trolley. By this time we both had sufficient to eat and decided that we didn’t really want anything off the trolley however our waiter kindly boxed up some Battenberg cake for us to take home and enjoy later.  The battenberg cake was truly delicious and Fortnum and Mason have shared the recipe for their battenburg here.

No trip to Fortnum and Mason will be complete without the purchase of some loose tea to take home.

The afternoon tea is priced at £44 per person plus £13.50 for the champagne.  I’m hooping to return again for the High Tea which instead of sandwiches has a savoury course of Welsh Rarebit with Oven Dried Tomato & Caramelised Shallot, Lobster Omelette Victoria with Lobster Bisque & Truffle, Beef Wellington, Celeriac Puree with Merlot Sauce, Eggs Royale, Scotch Egg with Mango Chutney, Pork Escalope Cordon Bleu and Wild Mushroom Pithivier.