Afternoon Tea for my Birthday

I love afternoon tea at the Berkeley in London. As tea goes, it not traditional and it's probably not the best taste-wise (not that it's not tastey, but sometimes they get so fancy they sacrifice taste just a bit), but it's still my favorite. It's the girliest tea ever and it's just so much fun! They base all their desserts off the latest runway styles and it's a hoot!

One of these day I'm going to post photos from the many times I've had this tea and I'll actually review the experience like a proper restaurant review, but for now, it's my birthday (well it's after my birthday, but the post is about my birthday tea, so you get what I mean) and a proper review isn't as much fun!

The tea starts out with a plate of finger sandwiches, which are always nice. They offer you more sandwiches (as many as you want) but I never take them because I'm much more interested in the little savories. They change up with seasons (not the fashion seasons, the actual ones) and they are always delicious.

This season, they were on fine form. There was a chilled tomato soup (I don't have a photo, sorry) that was nice (their soups are usually a bit bland and this wasn't.) Then there were the four munchies above. Clockwise from top left: a beet and goat cheese tart with fried basil, a ham and cheese filo sandwich, tuna tartare, and crab salad in a little cone. I liked them all! My favorite was the ham and cheese filo one, I think. It was parma ham or something of the sort and I love filo, plus it had a nice caramelized topping. The tuna was very nice and the crab was excellent (although the cone was a bit blah). The beet thing was surprisingly good! Not that I don't like beets but chartreuse food is usually not the most flavorful--in this case, though, the beet worked very nicely with the goat cheese and the tender tart crust. Plus I like the fried basil--it has all the flavor but a crispier flavor!

But let's face it, "fashionista afternoon tea" is all about the fashion desserts! The cookies were nice enough--butter cookies with royal icing aren't terribly exciting from a taste standpoint but you've got to love the decorations! The parfait with the hat was objectively delicious--mango and blueberry--but since I'm not a huge fan of either, it wasn't my cup of tea. The pink ballet one was very nice. It was guava and lemon verbena panna cotta. Usually I'm not a huge panna cotta fan, but this was quite pleasant.

These four were all yummy! The stripy pink and orange one was nice, nothing spectular, but very nice. The other pink one (with the white chocolate top) was cherry and white chocolate mousse, which were delicious, though a bit gelatinous for my taste (it's a texture issue I have, but like the mango parfait, it was objectively very nice.) The one with the green spun sugar was excellent! It was coconutty with a hint of pineapple and the texture was very good. The sugar was beautiful, but a bit pointless; since spun sugar is quite sharp and not terribly tasty, I wasn't about to eat it. I didn't really mind though, the pastry more than made up for the silly topping. By the way, the sugar was, apparently lime flavored, but I didn't check. The chocolate hand bag was delicious. Just chocolate pannels around a chocolate and pecan cake--what could be wrong there?

By far my favorite dessert was this little green cake with a pansy/johnny jump up on top. It was beautiful and every bit tasted delicious! The moist pistachio cake worked perfectly with the smooth poppy seed parfait. And the pansy on top was pretty and perfectly edible (pansies really don't have much flavor to them and they're delicate enough to blend with the rest of the dessert without distracting from the texture.)

Because it was my birthday they also brought me a "happy birthday" plate with berries and an incredible (and strongly boozey) chocolate truffle. I love how they put the candle in the strawberry, I really must remember that for the future! And I ate all this before heading home to my birthday bunny cake!