Afternoon Tea at Claridge's, Mayfair

For a long time, I dismissed afternoon tea as a twee, anachronistic routine laid on purely for day-trippers and tourists. I was in no rush to drop half a ton on some cold sandwiches and cakes, and I saw little to recommend spending an afternoon in a stuffy hotel foyer surrounded by loud Texans in ill-fitting house jackets. Real Londoners, I thought, should avoid it in the same way we'd avoid the changing of the guard or Portobello Road on Saturdays - let's leave afternoon tea for the tourists, and cut our own crusts off some Boots Meal Deal sandwiches if we felt so inclined and head down the pub.

In most cases, too, I still think I'm right - there are way too many places doing this kind of thing pretty half-heartedly (think bought-in sandwiches and cakes and packet jams) just so some timid out-of-towners can tick it off their "things to do" list, and none of them are cheap. They all suffer from that depressingly common affliction of anywhere popular with tourists - like Leicester Square restaurants and Madame Tussaud's, if you're going to be full anyway, why bother being good?

So it's all the more impressive that despite all the reverse-snobbery and emotional baggage I took with me to Claridge's of a Sunday afternoon for a friend's birthday, I managed not only to enjoy a few hours of the most wonderful gastronomic theatre, but left with my mind completely changed about the ceremony of afternoon tea itself.

That ceremony begins the moment you step through the handsome revolving door from Brook Street, onto the gleaming black and white marble floor, and up to the twinkly foyer restaurant. It's a building to take your breath away - luxurious, certainly, but refined and elegant in a way that nowhere else could dream of matching. Not even its closest rivals, the Dorchester or the Connaught or (arguably) the Savoy can manage this kind of effortless, stately glamour; even the odd modernist touches, such as the vast Dale Chihuly glass chandelier coiling out from the middle of the foyer ceiling, only seem to compliment the art deco twirls and flourishes and the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The word "timeless" almost only tells half the story - Claridge's seems to exist in an entire enchanting, glittering dimension of its own.

In this room, in this hotel, attention to detail is everything. And so, with the arrival of crustless finger sandwiches on a classic Limousin porcelain, anything even slightly out of place would have raised a (polite, gently disapproving) eyebrow. But the sandwiches were seemingly cut with a razor blade and ruler in immaculate rows, accompanied by delicate gougeres which dissolved into cheesy savouriness the second they hit the tongue. Sandwich flavours were traditional, but with the occasional unexpected twist. Smoked salmon, for example, was pressed not next to normal dairy but "shrimp butter" and samphire, adding an extra seafoody dimension, and roast chicken tasted of the highest quality bird and a mysterious note of tarragon.

Once the savouries had disappeared, they were replaced (gracefully, almost invisibly) with mini scones, home made jam and quite honestly the best clotted cream I've ever tasted in my life. Dense without being cloying, tasting of farm-freshness and as bright as the driven snow, it was magical stuff, and we still talk about it. It would almost - no, it would, definitely - be worth going back just for that.

And nothing so simple as "cakes" to follow the scones, either. No, instead here are four examples of the finest French patisserie, including a cherry cake with a handsome flourish of carved chocolate on top, an eclair with a gentle pear flavour, and a kind of blackcurrant medallion with an elaborate topping of soft meringue. Again, not a berry, base or button out of place. Some of us couldn't finish them (not me of course, but I was sure to cast a disapproving glance at those in question), and they were boxed up and tied with ribbons to take home.

Teas are by expert tea-lady Henrietta Lovell, the house champagne is Laurent Perrier (of which we took full advantage), and on the way out you're encouraged to fill your own bags of Victoriana confectionary for the journey home. Everything gleams with care and attention; you can't - you literally are unable to - fault any of it, from start to finish.

Well, almost everything. For as much fun and joy as afternoon tea at Claridge's undoubtedly is, blimey do you pay for it. The advertised £50 a head is just the start - with service, champagne and God knows what else (I don't think they even include tax as part of the inital £50 but I could be wrong, annoyingly I forgot to take a picture of the bill) you'll probably not get away with much less than £80 per person. And I'm not so much of a hopeless Claridge's fan to understand that is way, way more than what most people want or are able to spend on tea and cakes.

But what tea and cakes. And yes it's a lot of money but I honestly enjoyed this more than I've enjoyed many £80 dinners at restaurants elsewhere. The cliché about afternoon tea is that the sandwiches and cakes aren't really the point, that it's more about the formalities and traditions and stealing glances at old Mayfair ladies with big hair than the food. This, in many lesser places, is certainly true. But along with all that, serenaded by piano and cello and in the most beautiful dining room in London, at Claridge's you also get food and drink of purest gold. Surely that's worth paying for, once in a while?

Thanks Hannah and Alison for some photos.

9/10

The Delaunay, Aldwych

However much fun it's been having so many days off work over the festive period (due apologies and commiserations to those who haven't, of course) it is frighteningly easy, after two weeks of late nights and lie-ins and general dossing about, to lose track of time completely. I strolled into Soho yesterday afternoon with the intention of toasting the New Year at Bob Bob Ricard, only to find it disconcertingly dark and empty and, well, closed. As indeed was Polpo. And Wright Bros. And Dehesa. Turns out yesterday was a bank holiday, a fact I probably should have been aware of, but - to cut a long story short - wasn't. Increasingly frantic, not to mention hungry, I vaguely recalled some Twitter activity centred around newly opened Delaunay in Aldwych, and a grovelly phonecall and 5 minute cab ride later, I and a couple of friends found ourselves in seemingly the only restaurant open on 2nd January in the centre of London.

A lunch of convenience, perhaps, but that's not to say I wasn't looking forward to it. Sister restaurant The Wolseley was never really my cup of tea - sure they do a very nice Eggs Benedict but £13.50? We are still talking about ham and eggs aren't we, not Beluga Caviar? - but the buzz surrounding this latest place was deafening. Fay Maschler swooned, TimeOut gushed, and the word from various first-week visitors was universally, uniformly positive. And after some solid, straightforward dishes sold at a healthy premium, in an admittedly gorgeous room staffed with pleasant and obliging people, I could just about see how it could have gathered some fans. That was, until the bill arrived... but let's not get ahead of ourselves.


After some excellent house bread with Echire butter, the first dish I'd agreed to pay for as opposed to had forced on me (more on that later) was a Veal Holstein. At £21.50 it was a generous portion of nicely cooked meat but the unidentifiable brown smear underneath was less a sauce and more like something that had failed to be removed by the previous dishwasher cycle. The staff did suggest I ordered a side to go with it - unseasoned, damp but fresh tasting spinach - but this was crying out for the volcano of rich veal stock and truffled mash that Bob Bob Ricard's version comes with. Bloody Bank Holidays.


Other main courses were, admittedly, better. A chargrilled slab of Pollock was a beautiful bit of fish, simply presented with a soft boiled egg and buttered new potatoes - comfort food at its most comforting. And omelette Arnold Bennett, when it finally appeared (a mix up with the orders but one charmingly apologised for and fixed) had a good cheesy flavour even if it was a bit runny. House fries needed more salt but were crunchy even to the bottom of the bowl.



Desserts continued in the same not-bad-but-not-quite-value vein. The dangerous sounding Scheiterhaufen was the best of them, a sort of boozy bread & butter pudding, soft and creamy. And an individual black forest gateaux was very pretty although it didn't quite get our pulses racing in the same way other versions elsewhere have. But my own "Mozart" was a very ordinary mixture of tart orange sorbet, chocolate meringue fingers and hot chocolate sauce - in fact it seems strange now, reciting those ingredients back, that it didn't taste a lot better than it did; you'd think you couldn't go far wrong with orange sorbet and chocolate sauce, but I'm afraid it was just a bit dull and not really worth the £5.25.


So that was it, and yes, I can easily moan about the high prices and somewhat unsatisfying food but it's a formula that has made the Wolseley as bafflingly popular as it is today so you can hardly blame them for sticking to it. But it was only when we were presented with the bill that another reason why I had avoided the Wolseley for so many years was brought to light - the dreaded Cover Charge.


The Delaunay - like the Wolseley - is not a cheap place to eat. We had deliberately asked for tap water, like we always do, and had naively assumed that the nice fresh bread and fancy butter was a complimentary way of getting our expensive lunch off to a nice start rather than an obligatory extra course. But no - the Delaunay would rather treat every customer as a potential freeloader, and charge each of us £2 for the privilege of walking through the door and using up their carpet, than trading in this miniscule premium for a payback of good will. Do other restaurants with no cover charge have tables of 12 snacking on free bread and olives then buggering off home? No, they do not. Cover charges are a mean-spirited, cynical and completely counterproductive way of clawing a couple of extra quid off unsuspecting punters and I hate them.


Ahem. I would, of course, in the interests of fairness, welcome a response from any person or particularly any restaurant that would like to defend the "mug's tax" of a cover charge. There was a bit of backwards and forwards on Twitter yesterday between a couple of people in the "well it's only a couple of quid" camp (though doesn't that argument work both ways? If they think we can cough up £2/head without making a fuss, surely they can take that miniscule hit on their profit margins), but largely it seems people are as infuriated by the practice as I am. One individual brilliantly compared them to the Ryanair-style credit card booking fees - not technically unavoidable perhaps if you read the small print or plan ahead, but in practice usually so.


Anyway, as ever with these things the only way of getting our message across is to vote with our feet. I would never advocate anything as deliberately disruptive (and potentially excruciatingly embarrassing) as asking for the cover charge to be taken off a bill - and in fact, that's exactly what most restaurants that charge one are banking on - but we can at the very least avoid such places altogether. Fortunately there aren't many, and even more fortunately, one of them is the Delaunay, and you really aren't missing anything much by avoiding there.

5/10

Afternoon Tea at the Cadogan, Sloane Street

I've been to Langtry's, the restaurant at the Cadogan, a couple of times, and have had a pretty good experience each time. I'm not quite sure why I haven't written about it yet; probably because I want it to remain my little secret and not have it spoiled by the world. But also - and here's my inherent British pessimism showing - it could be that I'm waiting for them to mess up one day, and I will finally understand why the place is always empty and be able to give it the inevitable low score. Until then, I'm withholding my final appraisal.


But this isn't a review of Langtry's, the Cadogan's fine dining restaurant (£22.50 for 3 courses at lunchtime - try the prawn cocktail). This is Afternoon Tea, which you take in the Drawing Room, a pleasant wood-panelled space served by smart waiters in dark suits, some of whom look old enough to have served Lily Langtry herself. There's a lot of history at the Cadogan, not much of it immediately obvious until you do a bit of research. Oscar Wilde, for example, was arrested in his room here in 1895 (room 118, apparently - we were tempted to try and put down this number on the bill when it arrived, but thought better of it. I do want to go back, after all), and Lily Langtry, 19th century beauty and mistress to Edward VII, continued to live here for many years after her house was adopted to become part of the hotel. How nice it must be to have your house converted into a hotel around you and to be able to carry on living in your own bedroom, only with room service. I can't think of a better way of enjoying my twilight years.


The food itself is pretty much a secondary consideration to the pomp and furnishings, as with any afternoon tea. Sandwiches were nice enough, with fresh ingredients and crusts cut off. The complimentary champagne was Perrier Jouet, and one of our party, being t-total, had a non-alcoholic cocktail made up for no extra cost (it had mint and elderflower in it and was lovely). Scones were the highlight - warm and fluffy with a huge dollop of clotted cream, although the jam was bought-in and not up to the standard of Brown's homemade offering. Finally, pastries were pretty good, with mini-éclairs, strawberry tarts and coffee cups making up what turned out to be quite a generous amount of food.

It all added up to a very enjoyable afternoon. The Cadogan is unmistakeably a five-star hotel, but is unstuffy and relaxed in a way that, say, Claridge's or the Dorchester aren't. Staff are chatty and accommodating without being overly "matey", and it feels very comfortable and homely, like you're kicking back of an afternoon in your rich auntie's front room. This atmosphere was even further enhanced by the fact that we were one of perhaps only 4 or 5 tables taken, and as I mentioned earlier on previous visits to the restaurant next door we have found the place similarly and pleasingly tranquil. So I will not hesitate to recommend the Cadogan, with one proviso - that you promise not to tell too many of your friends. Deal?

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Oscar Wilde

8/10