Today I want to share my review of afternoon tea at The Lanesborough hotel in London with you. This five-star luxury hotel on Hyde Park Corner in Knightsbridge is a great place to indulge in afternoon tea in the UK capital.
Afternoon Tea at The Lanesborough
My Glaswegian grandmother drank tea by the bucketful. Actually, she drank it by the cupful. But she drank buckets of it.
While it never struck me as particularly odd that my mother drank five cups of coffee every morning, my grandmother’s afternoon tea habit seemed bizarrely unnatural.
I remember watching her sip cup after cup of the stuff as I sat with eyes as wide as the saucer she placed her English Breakfast-filled teacup on, wondering how on earth anyone could drink so much tea.
Then I moved to Britain. In Britain, tea rivals beer as the national drink of choice. The back of a box of PG Tips, a well-loved brand of tea in the UK, informs the drinker that imbibing tea in moderate quantities can be good for the health.
Next to the word ‘moderate’ is the parenthetical phrase “(around five cups a day)”. I would hate to know how they define ‘excessive’.
The Lanesborough Afternoon Tea
My mother is visiting me in London this week. To celebrate her recent birthday, sate her nearly-insatiable sweet tooth, and honor my grandmother’s memory, today we set out with my boyfriend to experience the British tea obsession firsthand.
Our destination: afternoon tea at The Lanesborough hotel. The Lanesborough has won the UK Tea Council’s Best Afternoon Tea in London award and was the first place in the UK to have a tea sommelier.
With those credentials, I figured it was the perfect place to experience the British addiction in style.
I wasn’t mistaken. As soon as we walked into the restaurant in The Lanesborough where afternoon tea is served, we knew we were in for a treat.
The elegant room was set under a glass atrium from which hung two huge circular chandeliers. The white linen tablecloths were flanked by comfortable oversized armchairs, and a live pianist serenaded us while we enjoyed our afternoon tea at The Lanesborough.
As we sipped Earl Grey Supreme, Huo Mountain Yellow Buds, and Darjeeling, we indulged in a tiered tray of tiny finger sandwiches, small cakes, and miniature pastries.
These were followed by blue-cheese-and-onion tartlets and freshly-baked scones with lemon curd, clotted cream, and strawberry jam. It was sweet, both literally and figuratively.
The Verdict
We spent two leisurely hours enjoying our tea and cakes. After our last sip we became aware of the tremendous spike in our blood sugar levels, and figured we should end our afternoon tea at The Lanesborough before our pancreases did so for us.
As we floated out of the hotel and back home to Hampstead, I started thinking that maybe my grandmother had it right all those years.
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