Over the weekend, I visited French restaurant Balthazar in Covent Garden to indulge in afternoon tea with the bloke. The current theme for afternoon tea at Balthazar is based on British fashion designer Matthew Williamson's autumn/winter 2015 designs. The pastries have been designed to mimic the designer's collection.
Matthew Williamson's fall/winter 2015 collection is inspired by amethyst and sapphire and other richly-coloured jewel tones. Bright pink, purples, and golds are some of the colours used, and these have inspired Balthazar's head chef Régis Beauregard to create the pastries.
In addition to the afternoon tea, a glass of champagne or signature cocktail could also be purchased. The cocktail was designed by Matthew Williamson and the bar manager of Balthazar, and it's called the Cosmic Cocktail. The cocktail (the pink one on the right in the image above) contains Campari, Mandarine Napoleon, and a cube of sugar. It is topped up with champagne.
Our afternoon tea arrived, served on three-tier plates. On the bottom tier, we had the sandwiches. They included cucumber and pea purée with mint, smoked salmon with crème fraîche, coronation chicken, and egg mayonnaise and watercress.
The restaurant forgot to give us the pulled ham hock in mini fougasse sandwiches. I had to ask them for the sandwiches.
All of the sandwiches tasted good with fresh ingredients, and we liked the fougasse (bread for the ham hock sandwiches).
Scones followed, and we received two plain scones and two fruit scones. Clotted cream and strawberry jam were provided. The strawberry jam was a little too runny and kept sliding off of the scones, but otherwise, they tasted good.
Last up, we had the pastries inspired by the autumn/winter 2015 collection.
First up was the choux pastry (eclair) filled with fresh yuzu curd. The top is decorated with a wood-grain effect thin chocolate layer with an additional design using white chocolate.
After this, I tried the bright pink pastry - raspberry and hibiscus baba, which was a light sponge with a fruity raspberry flavour. The top was decoated with fruit (I think it was raspberry coulis) and a white chocolate leaf.
For the third item, we had a glass decorated with a chocolate bird and raspberries. This is the gooseberry and yoghurt roulade. A mousse-yoghurt was layered underneath raspberries, followed by the gooseberry and a light sponge. I'm not a fan of gooseberry, so this was my least favourite of the pastries and I did not finish it.
We then moved on to the almond and hazelnut rocher. This contained a design with a sculptured sugar hard sweet on top to make it appear like a flower bloom. The bottom third of the pastry was covered in cereal flakes. This was my favourite of the pastries and did not taste too rich.
The last pastry we had was the macaroon with blueberry and violet consommé jelly and white chocolate Chantilly.
The Matthew Williamson afternoon tea is served until February 5. Afternoon tea at Balthazar is served from 3:00pm until 5:00pm.
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