At the end of January, we went to Ampersand Hotel in South Kensington in order to indulge in our first afternoon tea of the year. Afternoon tea at the Ampersand Hotel begins at 2:30 in the afternoon in The Drawing Rooms. When we arrived at South Kensington, we had nearly two hours, which I envisioned would be spent walking around the Natural History Museum and the National Science Museum, befitting of our science-themed afternoon tea to follow. However, both of these museums had horrendous queues, and everyone (with children in tow) seemed to decide to visit. (The Natural History Museum was in the news a couple of days prior to our visit for informing that the dinosaur in the entrance of the museum would be replaced with the skeleton of a whale, so this may have increased the popularity of the museums that weekend.)
We had a quick look around the Victoria and Albert Museum, which did not have any queues. It was also busy, and we wandered around and found a room showing films with old footage. There was a documentary about the Crystal Palace that we watched. I've always been fascinated by the Crystal Palace. When we exited the museum, we had some rain but we soon arrived at the hotel, which is almost opposite the South Kensington tube station.
The Ampersand Hotel is a botique hotel. The interior of the Drawing Rooms and the lunch room next door look vintage but chic. The lunch room area is much larger and has pastries and desserts out on display. The Drawing Rooms is a smaller area at the entrance of the hotel. Blue carpets and chairs, stylish lights and wallpaper were the design of the room. Canvases decorated with animals in wine glasses were scattered around the room, and I liked the blue parrot-in-a-wine-glass.
The hotel seemed short-staffed when we visited. We were seated and given the menus, but they forgot about the champagne that I'd ordered and I had to ask them again for it. We were finally given it in the middle of our sandwiches.
I ordered the Darjeeling black tea, and my partner ordered a jasmine tea. The tea is loose leaf and the ceramic tea kettle can be topped up with more water throughout.
The sandwiches for the Science Afternoon Tea are a little different to other afternoon teas; they are savoury gougeres (flakey pastry similar to a croissant instead of bread). The fillings included Gloucester old spot ham, smoked salmon and cream cheese, coronation chicken, and cheese with fruit chutney. These were alright, but I am not too fond of the type of pastry.
The second tier up contained the scones, and these are absolutely delicious. The scones are white chocolate and served with clotted cream and strawberry jam. They were among the best that I have ever had.
Last but not least were the pastries. The waitress poured dry ice in a bowl around one of the pastries so that they would 'smoke' and look like a science experiment. This was amazing, and I took a lot of photographs of it as it smoked away.
The pastries included a Hazelnut, walnut and chocolate cake with mango mousse 'volcano' and meringue 'rocks'. I thought this tasted like salted caramel and could not really finish it as I am not a big fan of salted caramel. This tasted a little too salty for my liking, and I could not even taste the mango. This included a chocolate dinosaur on top. Each afternoon tea contained two chocolate dinosaurs - one white and one dark.
Next up was a pistachio macaroon with cherry sauce in a little plastic 'pipe' beaker.
Following that, we each had a raspberry cake planet, made with raspberry sponge. White chocolate made the planet's ring.
Last but not least was a green citrus cocktail provided in a beaker. This tasted nice. The dinosaurs seemed almost too 'cute' to eat, and we saved them to last.
My favourite part of this afternoon tea were the delicious scones and the dry ice being added to the plate to produce smoke to make this afternoon tea feel extra special. Service was friendly enough, but they did seem to be short-staffed, and I kept having to ask whenever I needed something; we were not asked throughout our tea how things were or if we needed more water for the tea. At the end, they accidentally overcharged me, and I had to sort out with the manager following my visit for a refund on the overcharged amount. Fixing the issues with the service would have made a better experience for us.
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