Afternoon Tea Dates are my favourite way to meet a blogger; you get to natter away for a few hours, eat pretty pastries and sip away on beautiful champagne while discussing your next big trip. Suze from the Luxury Columnist (my blog date) and I popped along to try the new Flight of Fancy Afternoon Tea at St. Ermin’s Hotel after receiving a lovely invite from the hotel. I think the blog date went well…we are still following each other on social media – you will get instantly unfollowed after a blog date if you don’t eat all your pastries!
Sandwiches
Unfortunately the gluten free bread was the thick spongey variety and were slightly chilled so they were rock hard hence weren’t very inviting. The silver lining out of this situation was that I had plenty of room to eat every gluten free pastry on offer and my two scones!
Scones
The scones passed my very scone test (they were easy to cut into, they weren’t rock hard and they tasted good!) however as you can see from the photos they were a tad crumbly – oh the joys of gluten free scones!
Pastries
There was a good variety of gluten free pastries on offer which I always love and included a rather tasty little carrot cake number which was definitely my winner of the day! Honestly you wouldn’t know it was gluten free it was that good.
Tea
I went for a green tea this time which is supplied by Newby of London; apparently green tea speeds up the metabolism so I thought it would be a great idea to drink green tea while partaking in afternoon tea pastries! And you can time your tea to perfection.
Now lets get onto the important stuff, the Laurent-Perrier Champagne which was perfectly matched to each afternoon tea course – the sandwiches were paired with a glass of Laurent-Perrier Vintage 2004 Champagne; the scones were paired with a glass of Laurent-Perrier Brut Non-Vintage Champagne and the pastries were paired with a glass of Laurent-Perrier Rose Champagne (my favourite!).
Atmosphere
St Ermin’s offers the afternoon tea on the 1st floor of the hotel and I would highly recommend nabbing a seat by the stair case so you can admire the beautiful chandeliers.
Service
The service was top notch and the lovely staff even laughed when I managed to knock over all my champagne flutes (seriously you can’t take this Kiwi girl anywhere! and I had even pre-warned Suze that I potentially would need to book a room after three glasses of champagne.)
Would I recommend – yes, the hotel is stunning and is in the perfect location to wander through the Royal Parks to burn off a few hundred calories after partaking in afternoon tea (or just drink the green tea like I did!).
If you want to read the full review of the gluten loaded Flight of Fancy Afternoon Tea then check out Suze’s review right here.
The Flight of Fancy Afternoon Tea costs £45pp and includes three glasses of champagne. The afternoon tea can be booked directly via St. Ermin’s Hotel website here.
Disclaimer: Suze and I were provided with a complimentary afternoon tea for review purposes and as you can see I’m always brutally honest regardless if I pay for my own afternoon tea or not.
xx
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