Afternoon Tea at Les Deux Salons

I decided to try the Afternoon Tea at Les Deux Salons because it is one of my favourite restaurants, and because they give afternoon tea a fair amount of prominence on their website and outside the restaurant.

The ambience at LDS is wonderful – they really make the most of the building and it is always a delight to be there. The welcome is always friendly – it’s just a very nice place to be.

Afternoon Tea, however, is a mixed bag. I’ll start with the good points:

The sandwiches: these were fresh and delicious, and although they mostly stuck to the classic fillings, my friend was pleasantly surprised to find mustard mayo on the salmon one, which we both thought was a great innovation.

The pastries: LDS is, of course, a French restaurant, so the pastries and tarts were absolutely spot-on. We were served delicate hazelnut and lemon meringue tarts and an apple pastry all of which were light, the right side of sweet and gorgeous to look at.

The mousses: pistachio mousse layered on a dark chocolate ganache was a dream, as was the light trifle: jellied fruits topped with sherry cream. Wonderful!

Now, I’m afraid, we must address the bad:

The tea: The quality of the tea was good, however, it was poorly served. Our tea was poured for us as soon as it reached the table – and of course it was very weak and unpalatable. Clearly they haven’t trained their staff to know that tea needs to steep.

The scones: We were very excited about the scones because they LOOKED perfect. Large, craggy and dusted with icing sugar. However, they were STALE. They crumbled under the knife, and even washed down with tea we didn’t feel like finishing them.

The cakes: I suspect that LDS just doesn’t have kitchen staff that are comfortable with cake. Like the scones, the two cakes we were served were stale, hard and unpleasant – most likely due to overbaking by cooks more used to pastry.

All in all, I would give LDS a 2.5/5 for its afternoon tea. However, I must state that this is an excellent restaurant – go there for lunch or dinner, but skip the dessert.

Afternoon tea at the Athenaeum Hotel, Mayfair

Food: 5/5

Service: 5/5

Ambience: 5/5

At a glance: generous, friendly, special

I have been to the Athenaeum for tea before, in 2009, and I remember being very impressed. So, it was some trepidation that I decided to return – always worrying that in the intervening two years they would somehow have lowered their standards. Happily not so!

One of the things I love best about the Athenaeum is that they staff are attentive, but not pushy. You can stroll into the foyer and take a seat without being asked why you are there, and everyone greets you with a genuine smile.

We took the Honey Tea, which at £39 is the deluxe package – I would recommend it over the standard tea if you like honey, alcohol and chocolate, but otherwise the Evergreen Tea is splendid.

The first step, of course, was to choose the tea. I had Margaret Hope Darjeeling which had a beautiful, floral, honeyed flavour and complemented the rest of the goodies perfectly. 

Next, came the “honey sandwiches”. The tea comes with honey roasted ham sandwiches and seeded rolls filled with goat’s cheese and onion caramelised in honey. However, they very kindly substituted half the ham ones for chicken because my friend doesn’t eat pork. She pronounced them the best chicken sandwiches she has ever had!

The finger sandwiches were generous in size and the seeded rolls substantial, but after the honey sandwiches, they bring you a platter of the standard afternoon tea sandwiches (cucumber, egg and cress, ham and two kinds of salmon) to choose from. The cucumber sandwiches were particularly impressive as they were served on pesto bread – a delicious combination which I shall consider when making my own afternoon teas. 

The sandwiches were followed by hot crumpets and warm scones (plain, but flavoured with orange blossom) served with bowls of jam, honey and clotted cream as well as butter. My only criticism would be that the jam was rather runny and slid of the scones, but otherwise it was all lovely – the crumpets were toasted to perfection, hot and crispy.

At this point, I was quite satisfied and what we’d had already qualified as a substantial tea. But. Next came the cakes! We were brought a glass of honey-infused Champagne each and a large platter of cakes. I was worried the bubbly would be oversweet, but it was merely floral, with a taste and odour of rose petal. The cakes were magnificent: chocolate millefeuille, honey cake, elderflower jelly, lavender macarons, chocolate and honeycomb marquis, honey cheesecake. I managed to try the millefeuille, jelly and macaron and then our waitress came back and offered to pack up our leftovers, which was very welcome.

I would definitely rank the Athenaeum as one of my top two afternoon tea experiences. It’s perfect for a group of friends or a low-key “occasion” treat as the atmosphere is relaxed, but the food is traditional, generous and served expertly. You can also call in advance for a birthday plate and they will pipe a message in chocolate.  I recommend going for one of the later sittings (after 4.30) as they allow you to linger as long as you please. 

Pub Food at the Sir Richard Steele, NW3

Address:  97 Haverstock Hill NW3 4RL

Cost: £9.95 for a full roast

Rating: 4/5

At the point of ordering a pub roast, the diner has usually already resigned him- or herself to something cheap and substandard swimming in watered-down Bisto and is hoping only that the portions won’t be too stingy. And so, it’s always good to discover a pub that bucks against the stereotype and produces a meal generous enough and edible enough to make one wish they served desserts.

I usually take my occasional Sunday roasts at the Crown and Two Chairmen in Soho, but since happily discovering it during a wander up Haverstock Hill I have been installing myself at the Sir Richard Steele for drinks and knitting on Sunday afternoons. The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed; young trendies mix with families and Old Men. The music is usually rather good, too.

The pub usually serves Thai food, which is yummy, though the portions are more lunch-sized than dinner-worthy. For post-drinking hunger I’d advise nipping next door to Oliver’s chip shop or two doors down to the local Chinese takeaway.

My previous Sunday jaunt involved many pints and several portions of chunky chips. Yesterday, we decided to do it properly and order a roast.

The menu offers beef, chicken and nut, which disappointed one of my friends who was hoping for pork. I do wish pubs would stop trying to convince their customers that roast chicken is part of the tradition – any real food lover will insist on beef, pork or lamb, surely?

I ordered the nut roast, which was excellent – very moist with a variety of different nuts, plus puy lentils. The portions were generous, too and I definitely appreciated the homemade Yorkshire pudding, and decent gravy. The vegetables sat carefully on the delicate line between too crunchy and overcooked and there were plenty of them: carrots, parsnips, Brussels sprouts and savoy cabbage. Washed down with a pint of Rum Cask Cider, it was a very satisfactory meal, though not quite enough to turn my allegiance from Soho.  

Restaurant Review: Joe Allen, Covent Garden

Venue: Joe Allen
Food: 4/5
Wine: 5/5
Service: 5/5
Atmosphere: 5/5

Recommended for: Anyone who enjoys people watching, low lighting, underground dining and friendly buzz while enjoying excellent food.
Hidden away along a rather unprepossessing stretch of Exeter St, lies one of Covent Garden’s most enticing restaurants. The entrance looks like that of a small nightclub or even a Prohibition-era speakeasy, down a small flight of dark stairs into a vibrant bar and dining area. The walls are crammed with theatrical posters and the dark wood interior creates an old-fashioned glamour which I personally can’t resist.

The menu at Joe Allen looks fairly small compared to that of other restaurants, but it is so tantalising that choosing your meal from such a box of delights can be taxing. It took my friend about half an hour to choose what she wanted from the splendid array before us. Our friendly, smiling waitress, though visibly amused, handled the first-timer with aplomb, though she had to return a few times before taking my friend’s order and then again to inform me that said friend had tarried so long the dish I’d ordered was off the menu.

One of the best things about Joe Allen is its excellent and reasonably priced wine list where an entire bottle of wine is hardly more expensive than a main course. We opted for a bottle of Muscadet – a delicious, delicate wine which managed to be wonderfully warming without being in the least soporific.

To start, there was octopus and artichoke salad – tasty and zesty, the octopus springy yet not rubbery and the artichoke well-seasoned but not too oily. I soon forgot it had been my second choice and tucked in, happily.

After a suitable interval we tried chicken with sweet potato and chilli puree and lemon sole which came topped with crunchy grilled asparagus and warm, juicy cherry tomatoes. The fish was well-seasoned and pulled away from the bones nicely – and the accompaniment was a perfectly judged combination of sweet and fresh and sharp flavours. I can’t speak for the chicken, but my friend pronounced it ‘delicious’.

Dessert was a slice of Jack Daniels chocolate cake, so moist it was almost like cheesecake in consistency, and drizzled with both white and dark chocolate sauces. Utterly decadent! The coffee, too, was of an excellent standard – strong without a taste of bitterness.

Our eating done it was time to collect coats and venture back out into London’s snowy streets. Well, it was either that or order another bottle of wine and settle in for the night!