A moment with the clotted cream

Sunday was afternoon tea day! Our food guide suggested Bea's of Bloomsbury as a good place for afternoon tea, so I decided to book a reservation there. SUCH a good idea. It was incredible.

Five of us went to the St. Paul's location for our reservation at 4:30. We found the place by following the directions and looking for the teapot lights in the window. It was a really cute place. It felt almost Alice in Wonderland-esque but modernized. Kara and I loved it because even though it was cute and girly, they played R&B songs from like 5 years ago. A strange but awesome contrast.

After seating us, the waitress took our tea orders. Per the suggestion of Kelsey, I got the blackcurrant and hibiscus. Definitely a good choice.

Shortly after our teapots arrived, the main attraction came: the food. Delicious doesn't even cover it. I know I should have looked for a gluten free tea to go to, but I wanted the full experience at least once. 

On the bottom tier were the "savoury" things: baguette sandwiches. I went for the pesto, mozzarella, and tomato sandwich. And ate about 3. The sandwiches were deifnitely my favorite part. Next were the scones and cupcakes. The scones were plain, so we slathered them with clotted cream and jam. For those of you who haven't had clotted cream (and I hadn't until now), it's like really thick whipped cream. So extremely delicious. We had chocolate peanut butter, passion fruit, raspberry, red velvet, chocolate coffee, and double chocolate cupcakes. It worked perfectly, because we each had one cupcake we didn't want to try, so we split each into four pieces. The red velvet was my fave. 

The top tier was the weakest link of the tea. There were these weird apricot puffed pastries, chocolate marshmallows, blondies, and brownies. The only ones I really liked were the brownies, and even then I was a bit underwhelmed. 

Drinking tea this way ^ is actually really bad etiquette. While drinking tea, you're supposed to look down at your tea, not above the rim. Also, putting your pinky out is bad form; it hasn't been done since the Romans in the 11th century. Things I looked up before going to tea!

We DEMOLISHED the food. We had originally planned on 6 of us going, so they prepared food for 6. We ate all of it between the 5 of us...oops. It was our dinner...and breakfast and lunch today. 

While it was delicious, I kind of regret it. I haven't been very good with keeping with my sensitivities diet, and it's catching up to me. When in Rome I suppose...I'm definitely going to try and find a gluten free tea to go to at the end of the semester!