Sunday, 24 April 2011

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.



When we arrived we were casually presented with dainty amuse bouche but true to our custom Anabelle and I instead opted for a generous flute of Champagne of unremarkable vintage, but of extreme comfort in the middle of the April heat wave. After a cigarette and a pleasant unhurried chit-chat on a cast-iron balcony overlooking the post-industrial back alleys of Dalston we followed the other guests in to take our tea.

Notice the violet cordial on the bottom of the
Champagne flute – Sharon's divine touch.
Before the sandwiches arrived and the tea had a chance to steep we pecked on cucumber slices topped with a spread that reminded me of my childhood. In fact the memory so intensely overpowered my tastbuds that I had hard time pinpointing its ingredients — ok, it was tuna salad. One enormous advantage of the communal table was the unlimited availability of one's favourites. We deplore buffets but communal tables are different. Although there is an abundant supply the guests have to negotiate the loading of their plates and everyone is too embarrassed to succumb to their base animal instinct to stuff themselves silly.

The food and tea were served in carefully sourced teaware imported from far-flung corners of the continent. There was a choice of three kinds of very good leaf tea: Assam, Darjeeling and Earl Grey. Large teapots held the hot water and guests put the tea leaves into individual strainers and steeped the tea to their liking. While the tea was steeping we dug into the sandwiches: delicious roast beef with horseradish, salmon on dense moist German rye bread, a salad of mange tout, beetroot and goats cheese on a lettuce cup and a mini tortilla (the Spanish omelette kind, not the Mexican wrap). The scones that followed were impeccable and so was the strawberry and apricot jam with a delicious hint of amaretto. Everything was made from scratch by Sharon. And then came the cakes: berry tart with crème Anglaise, dense poppy seed cake with lemon drizzle, chocolate mousse in chocolate cups and Sharon's unforgettable take on Mont Blanc.

Through her passionate care Sharon Jakobowitz conjures up a unique, thoroughly contemporary experience with an unsentimental hint of "old world" charm.

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