AFTERNOON TEA AT ST ERMIN'S HOTEL, ST JAMES

As it was Mother's Day last weekend, it was my choice where we ate….and I was in the mood for afternoon tea. However we had to celebrate Mother's Day on the Saturday and we had to have afternoon tea at midday as my daughter Arabella had two birthday parties. Plus I wanted to find somewhere that offered a kids' tea as well as an adult one and St Ermin's Hotel completely fitted the bill.

St Ermin's has a fascinating history - it is built on the site of a 15th century chapel and the building played an important part in World War II. Winston Churchill held important meetings there, MI6 took over an entire floor for their operations and there is even a rumoured tunnel that runs from underneath the grand staircase to the houses of Westminster. The hotel is also home to over 300,000 Buckfast bees.

Hence why the kids' tea is called the Busy Bee Tea and it consists of chocolate, jam and egg sandwiches and a lemon meringue pie, a chocolate and honeycomb brownie and a hazelnut and bee pollen cake.

Arabella LOVED the sandwiches especially the egg one and her favourite sweet was the hazelnut and bee pollen cake. Her only complaint was she could have eaten many more sandwiches!!

Pascal and I started with some tea - peppermint for him and caffeine free English breakfast for me - and then we tucked into our delights.

Like Arabella, we adored our sandwiches of cucumber, smoked salmon and caviar, ham and mayonnaise and a sausage and black pudding sausage roll. But again like Arabella, they didn't refill our sandwiches which was a great disappointment to the both us as we could have eaten a lot more.

For sweet we had strawberry marshmallows, white chocolate with cherry ganache macarons, eclairs with  chocolate and orange, heart choux with tonka diplomat and strawberry jam and champagne and strawberry jellies.

I forgot to photograph them all in my excitement but they were all excellent, especially the macaroon and the eclair which was even better than the acclaimed Maitre Choux eclairs. None of us were especially keen on the marshmallow but it wasn't bad.

Finally we tucked into scones - normal, sultana and white chocolate - I am proud to say we polished the lot off with plenty of clotted cream and homemade jam. I need to start baking some at home.

All in all a very good tea - it was reasonably priced at £29 for adults and £12.50 for children and we even had the added benefit of listening to a beautiful harpist. Our only gripe was they did not refill the sandwiches - I thought this was standard procedure at an afternoon tea? I obviously did ask for more but then Arabella ate most of them! In all honesty though we did not really need more sandwiches as the rest of the tea was more than filling but hey, we are piglets!!!

Afternoon Tea at St Ermin's Hotel

Caxton Street,
London
SW1H 0QW
Tel: 020 7222 7888