Mrs Birks Blogs

So readers of this blog will know that for my 40th birthday I went for afternoon tea with Mr Birks at Selfridges.  Well, last week I had an afternoon tea experience with my best friend Paula, which made the Selfridges one look highly boring in comparison even though it was served on a picnic bench!  On a Friday afternoon, we experienced the Science themed afternoon tea at The Ampersand Hotel in South Kensington.  The hotel's proximity to both the Science Museum and The Natural History Museum explains the science theme and it featured dinosaurs, fossils, planets and spacemen. When the afternoon tea arrived, I didn't think I could be any more excited, it had little jellies served in a petri dish, a chocolate spaceman and rocket ship, a planet balanced on chocolate cake and a series of test tubes with different toppings inside.  However, I was wrong.  When the waiter magically made the dry ice appear, I was like an uncontrollable child with excitement. ...

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 ...