Afternoon tea @ The Wallace Collection

What do you do to celebrate becoming British? Have afternoon tea naturally!

So when my friend Catherine got her citizenship that’s exactly what we did. A big group of her friends headed to the Wallace Collection for champagne afternoon tea in the central court restaurant.

The center courtyard space used for the restaurant is light and airy with trees planted and a glass roof.

Here is Catherine – newly British and enjoying a very British event of afternoon tea!

Proof! Yes she’s officially brutush now! (Say it in a kiwi accent and it makes sense 🙂 )

The afternoon tea deal was £17.50 just with tea, or £25 with a glass of bubbly (excluding service). The tea included three different finger sandwiches, including a smoked salmon and wasabi one (not spicey enough) and mystery chicken (paste?!!)

There were then freshly baked scones – one with fruit and one with out, actually huge scones! And then a selection of mini desserts (lemon meringue pie – yum!) and random chocolate concoctions – it was a 50:50 split on who liked what! 

Nom! The piled high afternoon tea, this was for two people to share, but Catherine ended up eating most of one herself as we were an odd number!

Now they weren’t generous enough to replenish the food, the staff did bring more jam when that ran out, but otherwise what you see is what you get – so pricer deals elsewhere may still be value for money.

Given that we were a large group, with much confusion over numbers, I thought the staff tried hard, even if service wasn’t perfect. The limit on the types of tea we could have at an afternoon tea was surprising though, and given it wasn’t left on the table the service should be attentive.

All the girls and the remanants of the tea.

Yes this was after we’d had a *few* glasses of champers!

So yes I would recommend visiting for afternoon tea, especially if you have time to look around the collection before/after, but I think smaller groups would enjoy it more.