Chocoholic Afternoon Tea at the Hilton Park Lane
Last month one of my best friends completely spoiled me for my birthday by treating me to the 'Chocoholic Afternoon Tea' at the Hilton on Park Lane. It was such a thoughtful idea as it meant we got to spend some quality time together & as you may have gathered by now, I love an afternoon tea!
The afternoon tea is served in the Podium bar & restaurant, which has big floor to ceiling windows so the room was very light and airy. The room itself is decorated very 'hotel like'.. I've been to other afternoon tea rooms within hotels and they have put a lot more thought into the decoration of the room so it creates more of an atmosphere, but it was still nice nonetheless.
My friend had mentioned in the booking that it was for a birthday celebration so I was really surprised that the table had been decorated in little 'happy birthday' confetti which was done by the hotel. I've been to other afternoon tea's for celebrations before and if you want table decoration you have to bring your own, as well as clear it up before you leave. So the fact that this was done without either of us knowing was a lovely surprise.
We went for English Breakfast tea which you can get free re-fills for. The sandwich selections were:
On malted seed bread
Smoked salmon with horseradish cream,
Cucumber chive and cream cheese,
Prawn cocktail with lettuce.
On ciabatta bloomer
Coronation chicken with pineapple,
Ham and tomato chutney.
What I was really impressed with was they let you swap any of the sandwiches you're not keen on as you are ordering. I don't like smoked salmon (even though this always seems to be a sandwich choice for an afternoon tea) So if you wanted to, you could have all cucumber if that's what you fancied!
These were brought out as open sandwiches and were well presented. You can order a free re-fill of sandwiches, which we did as they tasted delicious. We did regret this later when we were struggling to finish the desserts!
Once the sandwiches were finished they brought out the main stand, which included:
2X Chocolate Chip scones
2X Plain or raison scones (you get to pick your preference)
Raspberry and dark chocolate parfait,
Lemon meringue cup,
Chocolate and coffee puck,
Mint and white chocolate tart,
Orange and chocolate macaron,
& Mandarin cake.
And then separately they brought over the clotted cream, strawberry jam and chocolate spread for the scones. They also came out with a plate shown below which had chocolate piped 'Happy birthday' along with another dessert - again an unexpected surprise!
From our experience the staff were really friendly and explained all the desserts when the stand was placed on the table letting us know what each one was. We didn't feel rushed in any way, despite staying over the amount of time our booking was for (2 hours)
Although as mentioned earlier I was treated to this afternoon tea for my birthday, I would definitely recommend it! If you're interested it costs £39 for the traditional tea and £49 which includes a glass of Pommery Champagne. There seems to be a lot of 2for1 deals online so I'd recommend having a google before booking!
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