Summer has gone in the blink of an eye, and it's certainly been an eventful one for me. I still am behind on many things from issues dating from 2017 and 2018, and I begin to wonder if I will ever get caught up. I feel like I can't catch my breath. Between working all of those extra hours for months and dealing with incompetent companies for personal affairs, I am happy when I can have a break and see friends. Good friends from the states that I met in early university days came to visit England, and they spent a couple of days in London. This means I get to have afternoon tea with them.
In the past, I introduced them to Fortnum & Mason as I had had a lovely afternoon tea here and then we had enjoyed a lovely afternoon tea in the summer of 2013. Last summer, they also visited, and we had afternoon tea in The Parlour, but it had gone downhill so much, and I was very disappointed. I'd enjoyed it because the tea was one you could just pop in to without a reservation, it was less formal, and the service and food was nice. However, I had other plans this year for afternoon tea, but we had to cancel due to their schedule of something in the mid-afternoon, and this was the only day we could do afternoon tea. We decided to opt for an early afternoon tea in their Gallery tearoom; we did try their branch in the City, but the hours were not posted for afternoon tea, so we ended up trekking back to their Piccadilly Street shop.
The Gallery is laid out with tables and also seems a little informal, which I wasn't expecting.
We ordered our tea, which came with a savoury item and a choice of a sweet item. I had ordered the vegetarian dish, which was basically mushrooms in a sauce on bread. As soon as I cut into the dish, I fished out a huge hair! The staff seemed to be quite embarrassed and instead made me the pea pasta...I think they ended up throwing out the remainder of the mushroom dish. At least, I hope they did! The pasta was actually really tasty.
I had the strawberry tart for the sweet item, and my friends had the scones and I also ordered scones. I do enjoy Fortnum & Mason scones.
So, what is my verdict? I was still disappointed, and the massive thick hair ruined the experience for me and probably for my friends as well. Also, we were in a little bit of a rush to get them to their afternoon thing, so it wasn't that enjoyable. I was also disappointed that we didn't get to have proper afternoon tea. So, sadly, I won't recommend Fortnum & Mason for afternoon tea. Even though the staff did rectify the hairy issue, it just wasn't relaxing and enjoyable enough. Perhaps I am comparing it still to their service six years ago, but it has certainly gone down in my view. I do enjoy shopping there, and I enjoy some of their products, but afternoon tea there isn't great anymore.
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