100 London things: 76
Given that the general theme chez
oursin these past couple of days has been food and sociability, I feel that it is probably time to think about afternoon tea.
A meal that I rather seldom take.
Also, I have already done Fortnum and Mason, where I used to go with another member of Council of Learned Association after meetings in order to moan and bitch over tea and cake.
However, I have on a couple of occasions done the afternoon tea at upmarket hotels thing, although one is now under new management and the other has had renovations.
I realised, working it out, that it must have been my father's 70th birthday when I took him and my mother to the Hyde Park Hotel for tea, which makes it some 20 years since. Very nice it was too. However, this is now the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, and while you can have dinner by Heston, I can't see that these days you can have tea, finger sandwiches, and cakes while overlooking Hyde Park, chiz.
Some years after that a friend took me to tea at the Savoy, and it appears that you can still have tea in the Thames Foyer, while a pianist tickles the ivories. When I was there one of the tunes they segued into was the tea-time version of 'House of the Rising Sun', a weird conjunction only surpassed by the lift musak version of 'Another Brick in the Wall (We Don't Need No Educayshun)'. But the tea and dainty eatables were extremely acceptable, plus, you know, river views!
I note for reference this really rather interestingly diverse selection of top ten London afternoon teas from the Telegraph
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