My friends and I went to Roast restaurant in Borough Market, London, last weekend to indulge in some spooky Halloween afternoon tea and cocktails. I had the vegetarian menu as the non-vegetarian one contained several beef and pork savouries. The afternoon tea and cocktails have a spooky Halloween theme. Last year, one of my friends and I visited for the "Day of The Dead" afternoon tea, which was popular: "Day of the Dead" Afternoon Tea at Roast.
The restaurant was decorated with skulls, pumpkins, and sunflowers. The sunflowers were part of the summer decorations, and these blended together with pumpkins and scarecrows. The skulls were the same as last year's but painted over.
I ordered the spiced chai tea and the cocktail "Pumpkilled". This was served in a skull glass, and it is a gin and citrus mix and served with mint and an ice cube, shaped like a pumpkin and coloured orange.
The sandwiches at the top were: Bridge roll with coronation chickpea, Nordic seeded sandwich with tofu, and bagel with cream cheese and roasted pepper. The chickpea and tofu ones were nice, but I don't like cream cheese as I find the flavour too strong and dislike the texture.
The savouries included a Bratwurst sausage roll (made with pea protein instead of pork), falafel with hummus, and a soft cheese tart (from the vegan menu to replace the Bratwurst Scotch egg made with pea protein).
The sweets were all cream-based. They included ghost mushroom with meringue and vanilla cream with berry, the spider web with coffee-flavoured cream (which I was not able to taste) and a little bit of sponge, and sweet pumpkin skull with chocolate mousse cream.
We also received a charcoal black scone with a serving of clotted cream and strawberry jam.
I liked the pumpkin ice cube in the cocktail.
I also had the "Devil's Whisper" cocktail, and this included rum and grapefruit. Sweet chilli formed horns with some black salt on the rim.
I also had the "Eye-land Curse" served in a tikki glass with an eyeball made of lychee and grape. The ingredients are rum, pineapple, and cranberry. This was the strongest of the cockails.
One of my friends had the "Petal and Poison", which was similar to the passionfruit martini.
I got some photographs of the decor before leaving. One of the scarecrows would make noise when people walked by it too closely.
The afternoon tea was okay and similar to last year. The only issue is that even though we gave our dietary requirements in advance and I called to confirm receipt, we had to go over them again and they could not accommodate all. The pastries are also all cream-based with not much difference or flavours between them, and the savouries were all either pork or beef. However, we liked the Halloween theme.
Leave a comment