After three afternoon teas in 2007 I thought that it was high (*ahem*) time to go again in 2008. Four Seasons received the ‘Best London Afternoon Tea 2003’ award and the “Award of Excellence” for 2006 by the Tea Guild… so I thought it seemed like a decent venue for our first afternoon tea in 2008.

The Four Seasons Hotel is a luxury resort located in Mayfair just near Hyde Park and its a very beautiful hotel. The afternoon tea is located in The Lounge behind reception. The Lounge is not very large so gives a sense of intimacy to diners. When we arrived there were only a few other diners already eating and it didn’t get much more crowded then that. It certainly wasn’t as busy as The Ritz or Claridges which was actually fairly pleasant. The atmosphere at Four Seasons is also quite nice with a pianist for background music. She was very good playing all sorts of pieces.

The venue offers a wide variety of teas (over 50), a few of which were quite different from other afternoon teas we’ve been to. The Traditional Afternoon Tea offered fairly stock standard sandwiches of Smoked Salmon, Chicken with Mango Chutney, Cucumber and Cream Cheese, Tuna and Red Onion, and Egg and Cress Salad.

In the desserts it was a little more original with Eaton mess crumble, Fruit cake with minted lemon icing, Cherry and chocolate gateau with tonka bean mousse, Peach roulade with roasted pistachios and Mango tiramisu. In all honesty the desserts sounded much more impressive than they tasted! Of course we also received the standard warmed scones with cream and jam and like most scones they were best eaten whilst warm .. once cold they became hard – so hard we could have thrown it at a window and destroyed the whole glass panel!

Overall the afternoon tea at the Four Seasons was pleasant if not outstanding. The food was so-so and though food was re-fillable they were very slow with their top ups. Also, annoyingly, instead of providing us each with tea pots to pour our own tea they kept the tea pots off the table … with the slow service this meant that our cups were almost always empty. That’s not to say that service wasn’t bad when we go it – the waitress was actually quite friendly, if inattentive.