English High Tea

On a recent trip ‘across the pond,’ our office assistant, Brenda, enjoyed a fashionable and traditional champagne high tea in London. Brenda is a bit of a tea junkie and just had to write about her experience!

As a self-proclaimed tea connoisseur, I looked forward to having high tea in London while my husband and I were on holiday. There are many places to enjoy tea, but I wanted the full experience, so after much deliberation I chose The Orangery, located on the grounds of Kensington Palace, the home of Princess Diana while she was alive. We arrived around 3:30pm, a proper time for high tea, and we queued up outside for a 15 minute wait. Once inside, we were welcomed by an impressive pastry display – fruit tarts, towers of scones and chocolate cakes draped in ganache, oh my! We chose to have champagne high tea, which included afternoon tea cakes, scones with Cornish clotted cream and preserves, finger sandwiches, a flute of Chapel Down pinot noir brut reserve 2002 and a pot of Tregothnan Afternoon Tea. It was a scrumptious, loosen-the-belt, meal and we had to be rolled out of the restaurant!

The most special thing about high tea is it’s formality and opportunity to dress up. Unfortunately, a foursome of women from Texas weren’t given a copy of the high tea dress code. How did I know they were from Texas? All four, large women proudly wore matching TEXAS t-shirts and various forms and lengths of denim shorts and tennis shoes.  They proceded to order chocolate cake, which they washed down with a tall, cool Pepsi. Not a single cup of tea or scone with clotted cream was ordered between them. I wanted to get up and apologize for our ignorant, bloody American-kind! It was quite the spectacle and I am sure the other guests, like myself, have had fun repeating the story!