Here’s a fun fact: afternoon tea came to be because a grumpy aristocrat couldn’t make it through the day without a snack.
Queen Victoria’s Lady of the Bedchamber, Anna the Duchess of Bedford, grew tired of having to wait for her late evening supper and mid-afternoon would ask servants to sneak her tea and slices of bread and butter.
This grew to cakes and sandwiches, until her friends began to join in and the starving upper classes hungrily adopted the practice. Since then, afternoon tea has become a staple of the English diet.
London is the capital of the world for tea and cakes and offers afternoon tea in all sorts of curious guises. While we’ve found the finest traditional serves going – those with lashings of luxury, gilded in gold – there is life beyond cucumber sandwiches and chocolate éclairs, and it’s no longer compulsory to take your tea in a five-star hotel in Mayfair.
Below are our favourite teas across London. Indulge your inner Wooster, point your pinkie finger to the ceiling and get ready to argue whether the cream or jam should go on first. It’s what afternoons were invented for — well, that and treating your mum. All prices are per person.
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The perennial dilemma of whether to skip lunch or cancel supper to make room for afternoon tea is answered by The Ritz, where the tea ceremony is administered in five sittings from 11.30am — 7.30pm, which happily welcomes families. Afternoon tea is served in the hotel’s Palm Court, and remains as close as one can get in London to the full Marie-Antoinette, let-them-eat-cake fantasy, not least an entry price of £79, or £57 for kids. A vast chandelier hangs from a ceiling painted in pastel-coloured frescoes, tables are dressed in acres of snowy-white linen while carpets are so plush one practically bounces. The food is even more sumptuous: finger sandwiches, scones with Cornish clotted cream and strawberry preserve (nothing as infra dig as jam here), plus pastries and cakes replenished on request. Meanwhile, 18 different types of loose-leaf tea are selected by the only certified tea master in a UK hotel.
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“Garden centre” hardly does justice to Petersham Nurseries, which has morphed into a full-on lifestyle emporium selling not only things to plant outside but antiques and objets d’art with which to prettify your interiors. There is no lovelier setting in London to take tea, with tables and chairs scattered around a flower-bedecked courtyard in summer and, in winter or when the weather’s not so nice, set amidst the heady fragrance of the jasmine-scented greenhouse (though note that afternoon tea, from £60 for adults and £25 for children, is only served from Fridays to Sundays). The food offering picks up on the rus-in-urbe vibe with simple preparations of top-notch seasonal ingredients — roasted red pepper tartlet with mascarpone and pea shoots; meringue with charred Petersham grapes and tarragon syrup; rose-petal Bellinis — though as owners Gael and Francesco Boglione are revered as arbiters of Italian good taste, don’t be surprised when your buttermilk scones arrive on a splendid Florentine-style, hand-blown glass cake stand.
Regency Tea at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane
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Afternoon tea at Drury Lane provides a reason to visit one of London’s most beautiful theatres without having to put on rave gear to match the catch of Much Ado About Nothing. Tea is a relatively recent addition to the 362-year history of a building where Nell Gwyn caught the eye of King Charles II while selling oranges, and is certainly a more sophisticated proposition than a bag of citrus fruit. The £59 price-tag (which stayed the same for the past couple of years) buys an afternoon tea that takes in everything from scones with cream and jam to vanilla cake filled with passionfruit and buttercream and topped by a handmade chocolate cupid. Savouries cooked by the in-house chefs include a bite sized crumpet with John Ross Jr smoked salmon and Earl Grey infused cream cheese, and seasonally changing mini pies (chicken and mushroom, steak and ale). There are vegan, gluten-free and kids’ options, too. The Grand Saloon, meanwhile, is a space as theatrical as the address, with soaring ceilings, sparkling chandeliers, a terrace for summer and walls hung with pre-Raphaelite paintings from the private collection of the theatre’s owner, Lord Webber.
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If only all department store cafés were like this. The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon sits on the top floor of Fortnum & Mason, holder of royal warrants to the late Queen and new King and opened by Her Majesty herself in 2012, which must have made a tasty change to cutting the ribbon on a new factory. The classic afternoon tea (£82) is superb — an avalanche of never-bettered sandwiches, scones and seasonally changing patisserie such as jasmine loaves and lemon brandy snaps — though the savoury version (£84) is arguably even better, with cream cheese-topped walnut scones and a crab and smoked mackerel éclair. For Mother’s Day, they’re laying on some one-off treats, too. Either way, don’t forget to leave space for a little something extra from the cake trolley. If you like what you see, pretty much everything, from the signature eau-de-nil St James china to the cakes and 150 blends of tea, can be bought somewhere in the store to take home.
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London’s oldest hotel (est. 1837) is where Queen Victoria liked to take her tea, a double whammy of history which makes Brown’s catnip for tourists in search of the ultimate in English heritage. It is also, though, an ultra-civilised experience that any Londoner with a taste for tradition should try. Wood panelling and roaring fires keep things cosy even in the height of summer, Paul Smith lighting and contemporary art stop things feeling too stuffy while an afternoon tea that can be replenished as many times as you want makes the £80 price a bit of a bargain, should you wish to see how many scones, finger sandwiches and sweets it is possible to scoff in one sitting. A tea sommelier offers guidance to the 17 blends on offer, or swap your cuppa for a glass of Moët & Chandon for an extra £12, another bargain at this bastion of old-school comfort. There’s a plant-based afternoon tea menu, too.
Paul Winch-Furness
One of the pleasures of taking afternoon tea in London is feeling like a tourist in your own city, a few hours of daytime indulgence that is the foodie equivalent of a theatre matinée, but with the bonus of stuffing your face with cake before rolling out into the dusk. And nowhere says tourist London quite like Tower Bridge, which is on majestic full view through the windows and from the terrace of this riverside outpost of the dependable Ivy chain and where the £11.75 price tag won’t leave you feeling fleeced. Granted, it’s not the most imaginative offering, given it is in fact a cream tea more than a full afternoon tea (Champagne can be added for £10). But it has the basics, and its location gives everything a sense of occasion. Also worth considering as pre-theatre before a play at the neighbouring Bridge Theatre.
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Swap your afternoon tea for high chai at this casual Covent Garden spin-off from Westminster’s high-end Cinnamon Club, likewise overseen by trailblazing Indian chef Vivek Singh. Finger sandwiches are replaced by creative savouries including the kadhai chicken spring roll with kasundi ketchup, there is papdi chaat and panipuri and, when it’s time for something sweet, saffron macarons, rosewater marshmallows, carom-seed shortbread and coriander pistachio cake. The best bit? A £27.50 price tag, which hasn’t changed in years. If you’ve pennies left to spend, hang around after for cocktails devised by drinks wiz Ryan Chetiyawardana, which go beyond the clichés of simply spicing up the classics by offering mixes with more subtlety and finesse.
Triistan Seowards of the Bulle
Before Cédric Grolet pitched up at The Berkeley offering a £135 tasting menu of pastries, there was Albert Adrià’s Cakes and Bubbles at the Hotel Café Royal by Piccadilly Circus. The Spanish chef is the brother of Ferran Adrià of El Bulli fame (where Albert was the pastry chef) but is famous in his own right for his Michelin-starred Tickets tapas bar in Barcelona (now closed). With such pedigree, this is not the place to come expecting tea and cake: instead, the Sweet Afternoon Bubbles Menu (£50) offers a three-course masterclass in why Adrià won the title of World’s Best Pastry Chef in 2015: a golden egg flan like something dreamt up by Fabergé or a strawberry and chocolate marshmallow that looks like a cocoa-dusted teardrop. The bubbles here are just as important as the cakes; add a glass of Veuve Clicquot for £15.
Rob Whitrow
A tea party is the perfect match for the Mad Hatter world of Sketch, where it’s always hard to tell if one is dining in a restaurant or taking part is a site-specific piece of performance art. Afternoon tea is served in the Gallery, not long ago given a total refurbishment by artist Yinka Shonibare and designer India Mahdavi — though the pod-shaped loos remain, surely the most iconic conveniences since Marcel Duchamp insisted a urinal was a work of art. The classic tea components arrive, like smoked salmon sandwiches and Battenberg cake, but there are gentle twists too, like cranberry and coconut marshmallow scones, or a pineapple éclair (fruit changes with the season). To pay? £85 for adults or £55 for kids. The drinks list, meanwhile, is a whole different rabbit hole to tumble down, with 16 teas to choose between and half a dozen cocktails created to match the sweet treats on the plate.
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Afternoon tea opportunities are pretty limited in Soho and alfresco options that don’t involve hanging off the pavement virtually non-existent, so thank goodness for the Ham Yard Hotel, where the courtyard is a super-civilised oasis shaded by parasols and oak trees. Afternoon tea is also served in the hotel’s Orangery inside and clocks in at a very reasonable (by London hotel standards) £45 per person. There are scones with clotted cream and preserves, of course, and smoked salmon sandwiches, but also more creative prawn arancini with garlic mayonnaise, a rhubarb and vanilla choux bun and a cappuccino tart: finger food that won’t get in the way of you snapping a selfie.
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Afternoon tea might feel like a quintessentially English institution but this French import puts a chicly Parisian spin on the concept. Tea at Mariage Frères is served in a simple white Salon de Thé in the atrium over a shop that claims to house the world’s longest tea wall. With more than 1,000 blends to choose between, Mariage Frères takes the art of tea very seriously, but just as much effort is put into the jewel-coloured patisseries, scones served with tea jelly, and tea-infused savouries such as beef tataki and smoked salmon that comprise the afternoon tea (£54). The hardest part, of course, is deciding what to wash it down with.
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Former Wolseley owners Jeremy King and Chris Corbin took the grand cafés of fin-de-siècle Vienna as inspiration when converting the one-time showroom of Wolseley Motors into the quintessential restaurant of early 21st-century London. That means there’s a Mitteleuropean accent to the cakes and pastries here, with Black Forest gâteau, apple strudel, Battenberg and Sachertorte as likely to be washed down mit kaffee as a pot of loose leaf. Rest assured, however, that the classic afternoon tea (£46.50) is as English as they come, with finger sandwiches, cakes and scones spread over a three-tiered stand topped with a silver-plated dome. Anyone who finds the idea of the full blow-out overwhelming will be relieved to know that a two-scone cream tea (£19.50) is also available.
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Covent Garden was once rebuffed by food-loving sorts as a haven for too many tourists and not enough decent restaurants. Not so now. The central neighbourhood has quietly become a rather exciting place to eat over the past few years and afternoon tea is no exception. Brasserie Max, found within the Covent Garden Hotel, is a sister spot to the Ham Yard run by the talented Firmdale lot, meaning value for money and a little bit of fun are very much on the cards. A full-throated classic afternoon tea, with all the expected fineries, comes in at just £45 a head (a steal these days) and celebrates the best of British with Rathfinny English sparkling available by the glass.