What happens when an Alice in Wonderland- themed Afternoon Tea gets an “after dark” makeover? Scroll through the photos and see. It was stunning - even though one of the cocktails was too sweet for my taste, the pear Cosmo was sublime and the Gin-spiked tea appropriately warming. The food had a fantastic balance of savoury and sweet - an amazing warm triple-decker ham and cheese toastie was a particular highlight, as was the savoury scone. The pastries were lovely, I particularly loved the lemon financier cake and the raspberry “mushroom” marshmallow. The “drink me” potion was sublime - really tangy (grapefruit?) with coconut liqueur. The theme was present in so many aspects, from the little jam tarts, chessboard cake (with different chocolate chess pieces for each of us) and even the menu which was hidden inside a novel. No stingeyness here, there was one of each item of food for both of us and we were totally full by the end, but not in the sickly unsatisfying way you sometimes are after an overly sweet afternoon tea. And lastly it is just a beautiful venue with attentive service. Strongly recommend.

A really fun and Science-themed afternoon tea, complete with Pipettes of berry sauce for injecting into your macaron, planet cakes and chocolate dinosaurs. A bit of dry-ice theatre when they bring the tray to the table too.

Have a look through the additional photos - some really beautiful pastry work here - apparently the patissières won “Bake Off - The Professionals” in 2018 and I can see why. My thoughts: Sandwiches - very pretty and tasty, but a bit on the mean-side in terms of size! It meant I felt that the meal was a bit unbalanced between savoury and sweet and despite how much we ate I felt a bit hungry at the end. No offer of refills either. Scones - superb. Warm, fresh, a good size and served with jam, clotted cream and - unusually - caramel sauce! Delicious!! Pastries - just beautiful, and the top tier were actually served on a dark chocolate sheet (we didn’t realise it was edible until the waiter was about to take it away!) I would rate them as: Passionfruit biscuit thing (photo 5) ✅✅ Mandarin and chocolate mousse log ✅✅ Banana and chocolate macaron✅✅ Coconut mousse sphere ✅ Pina colada cheesecake 🤔 Black Forest gateau 😕

An unusual and beautiful afternoon tea, themed around the life of a plant - each of the savoury and sweet pastries named (and appearing) like a stage of plant growth (bud, shoot, flower, etc) Instead of traditional sandwiches, savoury choux buns are served - these were very tasty, but not particularly filling and as is often the case I found this skewed the overall Afternoon Tea experience too far into the “sweeeeeeet” zone. The scones were small but perfectly round spheres and instead of classic jam and cream, they provided the little strawberries (one of my later pictures) which are crafted from white chocolate and contain jam and clotted cream, so you smash them onto your scone. Very novel and cute, but I think I prefer choosing my own jam and cream ratios... The desserts were lovely but again, for the most part, too sweet for my palate; the exception being the “full bloom” (the one that looks like it has rose petals on it) which was superb.

Another fun, themed afternoon tea by the Ampersand.

Discovered this in the archives - another of the gorgeous themed afternoon teas at the Ampersand; I don’t think I’ve had a bad afternoon tea there.

A safari themed afternoon tea! Came with a “leopard cocktail” complete with spots and a pawprint (see additional photos) - which was tasty albeit I don’t think I could have drunk more than one! Selection of teas were good. I had “rosy fig” and “caramel redbush” which were both lovely. Sandwiches were nice enough if a little basic, you could argue that they were “classic” (smoked salmon, cucumber, etc) Scones were a little disappointing because they were so small! Texturally they were pretty good, just difficult to put on jam and cream as they were barely a mouthful each. Pastries were pretty good, my complaint would be that there was only one of each, so you either have to fight it out for your favourite or attempt to cut them in half with your blunt little knives. (We did the latter) I would rate them as: Lemon curd-filled choux Bun ✅✅ Mini fruit tart ✅✅ Coconut marshmallow thing🙂 Mystery flavoured macaron🙂 Chocolate truffle🙂 Mini cheesecake 🤨 Red velvet cake 😕 “Lemon” cake 😒

The Christmas truffles were lovely, as were the tartlets. Otherwise nothing to write home about. #afternoontea