Afternoon Tea at Hansom Lounge, St Pancras Rennaissance

Afternoon tea was introduced by the British in the early 1840s. It is tea related ritual and a mini meal before dinner. Basically it works similar to a three course meals where they serve sandwich (similar to starter), scones and cakes and pastries (dessert). For us Malaysian, its like a rich people activity as it's really expensive and unaffordable. Well, I mean it's still expensive here if you really want to go for fancy afternoon tea.

This was one of the things I did last week while I was out shopping. I know how afternoon is like a mini meal to hold hunger before dinner but my stomach isn't that big. The afternoon tea made me so full up till late night. I had to skip dinner because I was too full. So full up details about my experience here.

Location : King's Cross
Price : £38/pp (Mid week offer is £28.50 which is a 25% off)
Rating : 7/10
You can book through the link here.

The service was amazing! The waitress carefully explain to us our menu and what tea would go best with them. Her recommendation was really good. She also made sure to follow up with us to see if we need anything. You can try as many teas as you want on the menu as well!

The afternoon tea menus were on the quite nice. There were a few pastries that was really good. If you are looking for ambience, technically this was the lounge for the hotel as well. So, you have people who are actually doing work there and waiting there. Its not the best place for ambience definitely as its a common area. But I gotta give it an above average rating for the service.

So, here's the lounge that I am talking about. Its a common area lounge for a hotel as well. It looks okay for me but I did expected more. 

The following are the menu and pictures of the afternoon tea itself :

SAVOURY
Smoked salmon rose on brown bread, cream cheese & keta caviar
Beetroot bread, caramelised onion, lavender flower & goat cheese
Spiced corn fed chicken, mango chutney, coriander on curcuma bread
Egg mayonnaise with wild garlic flower on brioche bread
Roast beef with courgette blossoms & manchego on caraway bread

If you do not like any of the sandwich, you can notify the waitress before hand and she would change it for you. I really like the spiced corn fed chicken sandwich and my friend said the Beef sandwich was good as well. I couldn't eat beef so I switch that off.

SCONES
Freshly Baked Lavender
Plain Scones Cornish Clotted Cream and Strawberry Preserve

The scones were alright. For the Lavender Scones, there was a little lavender fragrance but it wasn't that strong.

SWEET
Lemon verbena meringue tart
English honey cake
Chocolate & coconut mousse
Echinachea & raspberry “ice cream cone”
Blondie cheesecake panna cotta, passion fruit & saffron crumble

My favourite was the Lemon Verbena Meringue Tart and the Blondie Cheesecake! They were superb to me. The tart was crispy. I found the ice cream a bit soggy, probably because I was suppose to have that before everything else. I was already super full at this point.

So here's me enjoying my afternoon tea here. To be honest, for a common area, its not as noisy and you can actually really sit back and just enjoy your food.

Oh. I quite like all the tea that I tried. They went well with the sandwiches and scones. The waitress recommended us to take a lighter tea like Camomile and Malawi Lemon Grass with the sandwiches. For the scones, she recommend black tea and I had the Darjeerling Tea. It was really good and matchy with the food.

I had a good experience there but it would have been better if its wasn't in the common area but a more private area. From what I've heard from my friends, you can get better afternoon tea at the price of £38. However, if you are going mid week and pay £28.50, that would be fairly reasonable. :)

Will be trying out more afternoon tea and blogging my experience here since I will be based in the UK for awhile! But won't be as often since it's quite expensive ! :)