Wednesday, June 2, 2010

If you're not drinking tea, you're not in Great Britain

I couldn't leave Great Britain without one of those grand traditions: high tea. Meredith and I made it through Kensington Gardens -


- pretty! -


- and found our way to the Orangery.

The Orangery has little orange trees at each table so that you know what it's named after.


It's super light and airy in here - the room is really open and large.


We got the champagne tea - we're always adding champagne to things when we're on vacation.


I mean, look at it - bubbles make me smile.


The food comes out on a little three tiered stand - so classic.


We pulled the sandwiches out first. Lunch before dessert!


There's cucumber and cream cheese (of course), smoked salmon and butter (yum), cheese and pickle (which isn't pickle at all - it's more like chutney. Brits are so crazy), and ham and mustard. They were very elegant and make me want to say things like "lovely" and "spoonful of sugar."

We moved onto the intermediary between lunch and dessert - scones!


This scone was orange flavored (because, duh) and was really interesting to me. It looked like a biscuit (scones in America are usually all knobby and bumpy looking) but tasted like a scone - dense and sweet and crumby. I'm a big fan of clotted cream and jam. I'd put it on more things if I wasn't afraid of getting fat.

And finally, dessert!


The passion fruit tart was light and creamy and tart and sweet all at the same time. The crust was delicious and the whole thing was pretty much amazing. The chocolate eclair, however, was blah. I didn't even finish it. That should tell you something.

Overall though, very fun and tasty high tea. It's not every day that you get to have tea at a princesses' house. Not that she lives there now or anything...but a girl can pretend.

4 comments:

David Borgen said...

bah...silly brits...db

Ellen said...

I went there too! It was delightful! I did not get the champagne brunch and it looks like I missed out.

Becky said...

Annie and I totally saw Private Lives at the Orangery while drinking Pims...it was amazingly British.

Meredith said...

Yum and yum. Can I have some clotted cream right now please?