Now if you haven’t heard The Goring Hotel in London was awarded the Top London Afternoon Tea Award for 2013 by the Tea Guild. I was pretty lucky and had made my booking prior to the announcement and was pretty excited to hear they had won!
I am on a quest to find London’s best Gluten Free Afternoon Tea and I can tell you I have eaten the Good, the Bad and the God damn Ugly over the past six months when it comes to Gluten Free Afternoon Tea.
To prove how much of a quest I am on I ate two Afternoon Tea’s this weekend, one in London at The Goring and one in Edinburgh at The Balmoral (my very first Scottish Afternoon Tea!).
So I am going to make a pretty big call and say I think I have found London’s Best Gluten Free Afternoon Tea at The Goring and this is why!
All the Afternoon Tea’s start with the Amuse Bouche which is something slightly different and really tasty if you like seafood.
Sandwiches
Now I find gluten free bread to be awfully heavy and when you have two tiers of sweet treats to look forward too the less bread the better. The Goring served Open sammies which are toasted for the Gluten Free Afternoon Tea with lovely fillings of Chicken, Salmon, Egg and Cucumber; simple but extremely tasty as the ingredients are of great quality.
G had the normal Afternoon Tea – fully loaded with gluten and they were extremely nice and they were finger sandwiches.
Scones
Now this is where I find most Gluten Free Afternoon Tea’s wobble and fail as its pretty difficult to make a gluten free scone as most 5 star hotels have failed in some form or another.
G and I looked at my scones and we exchanged the look, first impressions they looked fantastic, now it was going to be the knife test – would I be able to cut through the scone; success and it didn’t crumble! Trust me my jaw was on the floor, the scone hadn’t crumbled! The final test, the taste test and score – it tasted like a real scone!
I had to include a photo to show the scone didn’t crumble, it was amazing!
G’s scones looked incredible so I thought I would share a photo
Pastries
The royal connection with The Goring Hotel is strong and on my Earl Grey Macaroon there was a gorgeous dark chocolate crown and Eton mess (meringue, strawberries and cream). I loved the Englishness of the pastries and that there were macaroons and meringues on the top tier; for some reason a lot of hotels don’t provide these sweet treats on the gluten free menu (weird considering they are gluten free!).
The hat is full of a fruit jelly sitting on a dark chocolate base, just in case you are wondering!
Now G had an amazing top tier and managed to scoff all three tiers just as I was cutting into my scone so I am taking that to mean that he had no complaints! The below cake was on G’s top tier, doesn’t it look amazing.
Tea
I chose the Silver Needles tea as I found this to be a nice compliment to the Afternoon Tea as its light and refreshing.
Atmosphere
We were seated in the bar area overlooking the terrace which was nice however I think I would have preferred to be in the lounge area that had that English cosy look about it.
I was hoping that it was going to be a sunny day so we could sit on the terrace however the clouds were not having any of it!
Service
The service was great, everything was bought out together which is unsual when there is a dietary requirement. The staff found a smaller table to put beside our table so that my cake stand could be placed beside me; yes I finally got a cake stand! G and I had a cake stand each and I was pretty excited and yes, over a cake stand!
We were offered refills of the Afternoon Tea so don’t panic if you think it won’t fill a gap; it will!
Would I recommend The Goring Hotel for Afternoon Tea? Yes with bells on and if you have a Gluten Free dietary requirement then this Afternoon Tea is the best on offer in London.
The traditional Afternoon Tea costs £37.50pp or the Bollinger Afternoon Tea costs £47.50pp and I would recommend to book well in advance.
xx
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