Afternoon Tea at Selfridges

Afternoon tea is now a thing.  In fact, I think it has been a thing for a long time but, as usual, I've been late to the party.  But what a wonderful thing it is!  At the risk of becoming a 40th birthday bore, I wanted to tell you about my visit in March to Selfridges for a afternoon picnic tea.

Afternoon tea is such a perfect thing.  Not lunch or dinner but an extra meal in between and it has a little bit of everything - cakes, savouries and of course tea.  With ours we also opted for a couple of glasses of champagne (did I mention it was a special occasion?) which made it extra decadent for a Tuesday afternoon.   We 'took' our tea at The Balcony, a restaurant at the top of Selfridges in the Bullring but we had done a significant amount of research beforehand and I also liked the look of the Gentleman's Afternoon Tea at Hotel La Tour which also threw a scotch egg and pork pie with mustard into the mix.  We found that prices for afternoon tea started from around £20 per person, although ours, with Champagne was £55 for two.  You can find out more about afternoon tea in Birmingham here

The Balcony offers 'the picnic tea' so our items of loveliness arrived on a mini picnic table.  As it was a while ago now, I can't quite remember exactly what everything was but I think the mini rolls contained Mediterranean veg with pesto, ham and mustard and crayfish and rocket.  Although the fillings were delicious, I enjoyed the bread rolls even more as they were seed-topped or had sun dried tomato in the dough and were the perfect texture.  Everything was served with champagne and our choice of tea (of course), I opted for a simple Breakfast Tea as I'm a fairly new tea drinker and not very adventurous.

The cakes that arrived on the picnic table were beautiful.  There was a little coffee and walnut tart which I was a bit worried about as I don't really like coffee.  I wasn't going to let it go to waste though and on tasting it, found it delicately flavoured and delicious.  There was the obligatory scone, which was huge and came with ample cream and jam.  Many a miserable time in my life has been saved by a scone with jam and clotted cream - fortunately this wasn't one of them but I really enjoyed it anyway.

My one slight disappointment was the macaron. Those of you that sometimes read this blog will know that I cannot for the life of me master the macaron, I don't know why, I just can't. But I do know what a macaron should be like - we had some amazing macarons courtesy of my sister in law from Neptune Cafe at The National Maritime Museum a while ago.  So, after that delicious experience, I was expecting this macaron (which looked so perfect) to be slightly crisp on the outside but gooey inside and full of flavour. Unfortunately it was hard and dry - a bit like a dry old meringue, a bit of a disappointment really (I still ate it though unlike some of the tables around us who left so much on their little picnic tables, I was tempted to ask for a doggy bag on their behalf).

So what have I learned from my afternoon tea experience?   I definitely want more! I'm aiming to try afternoon tea at all sorts of locations around the country - I'll let you know how I get on.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with this important message...