Best Place In London For Tea
 

Where, in your opinion, is the best place in London to have High Tea?

This gets asked fairely often. A search on "high tea" yielded a lot of threads, including this one with 66 answers - -

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34411956

This one, with 47 replies is somewhat more current - -

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34456840

Best wishes,

Rex

Bringing your message back up "to the top" since it is your first message here ever...

Hi kyle,

I believe you want afternoon tea. High tea is a workingman's cold dinner.

This site will help you.

http://www.gofortea.com/

Fortnum and Mason is a lovely place for tea.

The Orangery at Kensington Palace has a tea that looks to be fairly reasonably priced. I plan on going there during my trip in June.

Dear Kyle,

For the best "afternoon" tea ever....Brown's Hotel on Albemarle Street in the Mayfair area. It is expensive! Around 25pds per person. unfortunately they are closed until feb 2005 for renovation. If you are going next spring I would say Browns.

Penny and I met Starspinners in London at Brown's and had a wonderful time. We weren't sure whether we wanted the pomp of the Ritz or a more comfortable and relax setting and thank gosh we chose the later. Browns serves afternoon tea in their "Drawing room", a wonderfully decorated room with large comfy chairs and sofa's. During the winter months they have a fire in the fireplace.

As for the tea...imagine being able to choose just about any tea in the world. And you are given your own pot which is changed often to keep warm.

Also imagine the most scrumptious tea cakes and finger foods, sandwiches and pastry puffs. Out of this world.

And finally, the ladies restroom downstairs is a religious experience (hey we all have our quirks! grin!).

If Brown's is too expensive or you are going this year, I second the previous posters recommendation of the Orangery at Kensington Palace. They have a wonderful selection of foods and teas, with the added benefit of being able to look out over Kensington Gardens. What they don't have is the pomp.

If you are looking for that, there is only one place...THE RITZ. Make sure ot make reservations.

hope this helps!

If you are looking for a

Unfortunately, Brown's closed on April 8 for renovations and won't reopen for about 18 months. Headlines in the British papers last month announced that The Ritz is considering dropping tea in an effort to attract a younger, more hip crowd.

We've heard good things about Fortnum and Mason and the Dorchester. We tried tea at Harrod's a couple of years ago and it was fine, although not up to Brown's standards.

This trip, for the first time in almost 20 years, we skipped afternoon tea in London entirely and enjoyed a Cornish cream tea in a garden outside Truro instead.

I know I'll get shot down by m kingdom, but there is a chain in London called Richoux where you can get a meal, a full afternoon tea, or a cream tea consisting of scones, clotted cream, and strawberry jam. I find it quite good.

My daughter and I must have made bad choices at Patisserie Valerie. Neither of us liked our pastry selection.

I hear tea at the Savoy is very nice. We are going to try it when we go in 2 weeks.

We had tea at the Ritz in March. Yes it was expensive. Yes it was a little stiff. That said, if you are looking for the definitive English high tea experience - go for it.

Would we do it again? Probably not. Brown's sure sounds great.

JoeG

Here's another website to checkout -- all these places look pretty dear:
http://www.elegant-lifestyle.com/afternoon-teas.htm
I'm going in late June and we've selected Claridges.

Richoux is terrible, Patisserie Valerie is generally superb - as for your choices, I feel that one should be aware of what one enjoys.

Dear Kyle

Try the Savoy.....we went there a few months ago and it was very nice.

Last August we had tea at both Claridge's and the Lanesborough. They were both very good and the settings were unforgettable. I love Brown's Hotel but when it reopens after its 18 month overhaul I'm sure that it will have lost its old English, homely [as they say] atmosphere. Until fairly recently, I believe, it was considered very "nouveau" to use an interior decorator. One's place just sort of "evolved" but could look quite dumpy. You don't see the Queen really redecorating Buckingham Palace, do you? She probably just replaces worn out uphostery, carpets and curtains.
Sorry, I got way off the subject of tea!

The interiors of Buckingham palace were conceived by the finest designers and artists of the time, what rubbish are you talking?

Why change something when it isn't broken?

We've had tea at Fornum & Mason's (nice, piano player, dining room-type atmosphere), the Orangery (casual and less expensive, garden patio-type atmosphere), Basil Street Hotel (less expensive, comfortable sitting room atmosphere) and Browns (nicest we've been to but, as mentioned, closed for renovation - hope they don't change it too much!)

Browns, which I am currently consulting with regarding their refurbishment, has always been an hotel that Londoners rarely go to, be it for lunch, tea, or dinner. It is badly in need of a new image to encourage more local patronage rather than the Americans which have colonised it.

Are some of these places better than others with children ages 7 and 9?

Steve

Steve, I'd take the children to the Orangery at Kensington Palace. It's a pretty patio setting but a little less formal than the big hotels. As someone mentioned on another thread quite recently, the Diana playground is nearby. Otherwise I'd opt for Fortnum & Mason (a bustling restaurant setting) or one of the patisseries mentioned here (Valerie, Richoux and another I like, Paul's).