Tete-a-Tea

Anabelle and I may have just found the best afternoon tea in London. I know this is a bold statement but our Tete-a-Tea experience was not much short of flawless. Hosted by Sharon Jakobowitz in the former Dalston Boys Club off Kingsland Road this pop-up tea event is much more glamorous than the vicinity may suggest.

We entered the building through a beaten up old door unlocked by a buzzer – an experience perhaps more familiar to gallery goers and pop-up event enthusiasts rather than we tea marms. We peeked into the ground floor music hall whose air of last night's merry-making permeated into the stairwell. Up a couple of flights of stairs we were welcomed to a parlour that blended the atmosphere of a domestic homage to Dracula's lair with that of a Mayfair mansion set to hold a secret society meeting.

I didn't realize how intimate the event was going to be. If you're seeking to submerge into the soothing anonymity large cities offer to their dwellers don't go to Tete-a-Tea. The event takes the entire afternoon and you'll be seated at a country house-style communal table with 9 other punters. Do not expect a chatty bed-and-breakfast overbearing host and geriatric patrons though. Anabelle and I were the only white-haired ladies among the guests who hailed from Germany, Denmark, Canada, Australia, Italy and, yes, London – the kind of mix so familiar to Londoners. It was remarkable how unconstrained it felt to sit with all these strangers. We thought we'd need to drop in an Isabelle Hupért-style, irreverent, shocking remark to get the conversation going but people seemed quite comfortable with each other and there was no need to disrupt the genteel atmosphere.

The Soho's Secret Tea Room

After a lovely afternoon perusing the fleshy Boucher's at the Wallace collection Agnes and I developed quite an appetite. We resolved to head into depths of Soho to see if we could find ourselves a satisfying afternoon tea.

We were intrigued by Soho's Secret Tea Room above the Coach and Horses on Greek Street and enquired at the bar. We were invited to walk through the kitchen and up a back staircase to the second floor — we were loving it already. Upstairs shabby chic, with an emphasis on the shabby, prevailed in the delightfully cozy tea room filled with tables padded with innumerable layers of vintage table cloths, assorted mirrors on the walls and fresh flowers on the tables.

A variety of patrons sat huddled over mismatched tea pots and mounds of goodies. The atmosphere was made even more pleasant by the record player softly spinning Bing Crosby and other nostalgic crooners. We were very hopeful and immediately relaxed by the pleasant and unpretentious surroundings. Good thing we were relaxed as it took quite a long time for the waitress to make it to our table. When she brought the menu we were delighted to see classic tea time sarnies such as cucumber, egg and cress and smoked salmon with cream cheese. The tea menu consisted of a choice of the 3 above mentioned finger sandwiches, a choice of a fruit or plain scone with clotted cream and home made jam, a choice of cupcake, cake and, of course, tea. My goodness how to choose, all the cakes looked scrummy. We must admit that the tea list was a little disappointing with an emphasis on blends, flavoured teas and Rooibos. We are rather traditionalist when it comes to our teas. We selected Darjeeling and a premium English Breakfast which was supposed to cost a bit extra although they didn't charge us for this.

Ladurée at Harrods

Last Saturday, running errands in Knightsbridge, Anabelle and I found ourselves in desperate need of refreshment. It was tea time and we decided to visit Ladurée at Harrods. Although a French import the house seemed to offer a decent selection of tea and the pastries. Anabelle and I are familiar with Ladurée's macarons from our Parisian jaunts and we are both very fond of them indeed.

The beginning of our tea was not promising. We got shuffled around a vague queue until a friendly waitress showed us to our table. I'll take this opportunity to remark on the setting and the clientelle. The restaurant is very busy with people using it as an entrance to Harrods. The atmosphere is a bit hurried for my taste, more like a café than a tearoom but it fits well with the maison's Parisian provenance. The patrons seemed to consist chiefly of groups of bored rich macho males – who didn't converse but vacantly stared and used grunts to communicate their orders to the staff – peppered with appropriate female counterparts and the occasional tourist. Expensive but vulgar clothing dominates. If you want to blend in wear an expensive factory-tattered t-shirt and sunglasses with a large Chanel or Dior logo. If clothing expresses one's beliefs the patrons at Ladurée worship wealth way ahead of aesthetics.

Now to the tea. With the exception of substituting croissants and other "viennoiserie" for our traditional scones the tea menu looked unremarkable albeit promising. The menu offers a choice of two each from four sandwiches, four aforementioned pastries and four cakes. Anabelle and I like to sample so we exhausted the choices of the menu with our order. While Anabelle trekked to the toilet a pleasant waiter chap asked me to accompany him to the cake counter to select our cakes. The pastries and cakes at Ladurée looked truly splendid. I picked a praline mille-feuille, raspberry tart, rosewater cupcake and a creation they call Isphahan, which is an oversized macaron filled with berries flavoured with rosewater. Pleased with my selection I returned to the table to find Anabelle just arriving back from the toilet. Wanting to refresh myself I set out on the journey through the basement wine shop to the toilet. When I got back Anabelle told me that the pleasant chap was new and he didn't know what he was  doing and that we wouldn't get the magnificent cakes I selected and we had to select cakes from the menu. This was not a disaster as the only cake we had to substitute was the rosewater cupcake. We opted for the last remaining choice on the menu: carre de chocolat.