As a birthday treat on Wednesday 29th August, I had the misfortune of coming across your afternoon tea menu at the Selfridges hotel. I must confess that I didn’t choose the venue based on any more than the convenience of the location. However, after this first visit, I have no intention of ever returning. This was nothing less than a cream tea fiasco.
A party of four, and having partaken of similarly priced afternoon tea menus before, we decided to opt for 3 items from the menu to share, as afternoon tea portions tend to be generous, and we didn’t want to be sick during our evening dance class, nor did we want to be encumbered by a doggy bag.
The items we chose were:
Classic Sandwiches A selection of classic sandwiches with tea or coffee £6.50
Cream Tea Scones, clotted cream and jam with tea or coffee £6.50
Naughty But Nice A selection of fresh cream cakes with tea of coffee £6.50
Aside from the tortuously slow service – we had to beg to be given a menu; and then to be given the right menu (afternoon tea); and then to have our order taken - the thing that really shocked and disappointed us was the food itself. Allow me to take you through the problems:
Classic sandwiches consisted of the equivalent in quantity of one sandwich made from two very average pieces of white sliced. There were four different ‘soldier’ sandwiches – let me be very clear – there was only one finger of each flavour (egg mayonnaise, smoked salmon, cucumber, and cream cheese). Perhaps a diagram will help.
Now, I can forgive you for not knowing that I wouldn’t eat egg if you paid me, and that my brother is allergic to fish, and that my boyfriend’s idea of a bad time is any kind of soft cheese, but I think it is truly mean to charge so much for so very little. I can understand that with your overheads you would have to charge more than the food itself is actually worth, but this is taking it to an extreme.
Unfortunately our Cream Tea had to be sent back. Of course we accept the Mr Whip alternative to clotted cream as a London thing, but, cutting into one of our two scones, I found the consistency to be that of a dry, flaking pumice stone. Our waiter, suggesting that perhaps it was overcooked, removed the offending item, promising to return with a better one. As the waiting set in, we decided to make a start on the Naughty But Nice cakes. Now I am usually charmed by all things miniature, but these wouldn’t look out of place in my dolls house. And as for fresh cream, there wasn’t much of that in sight. Perhaps I had misread the menu? I checked and saw that cream was definitely mentioned, that at no point to the words ‘little’ or ‘petits fours’ appear, and that the word chocolate was omitted too. I looked back at the plate. There were four tiny brown items – one of which could only be described as a chocolate covered biscuit. I must say that these were not what I would call naughty at all. Perhaps the description in the menu should read: ‘puritan, abstemious cakes. Perfect for those on a diet’.
I must say at this point that we are very grateful to you for providing us with 6 mini jam pots to go with our two scones. My mother put them straight in her handbag to use as paint pots in her studio.
Thirty minutes later our second cream tea arrives, only this time it’s only 1 scone. It’s beautifully garnished with a couple of strawberries and looks very elegant on its own gargantuan tray. There is no jam, but a blob of marmalade! You can imagine my surprise I’m sure. I nearly fell off my chair. Imagine marmalade on a scone. It’s bizarre. My mother is less perturbed by the lack of strawberry jam than she is by the epic wait and the missing scone. She insists on another, and I retire to the toilet.
Now I must question your thinking on this one. Why do you have a menu framed on the back of the cubicle door? Is this to check things off as I go?
Your waiters were kind enough to deduct the actual tea off our bill as an apology for the poor service, but I think you can do more. This was a deeply scaring episode for me and my family, for whom afternoon tea at a hotel will never be the same. What can be done? Please book us into the priory where some of your work can be undone and we can be psychologically mended. And for our return into the world, perhaps some Selfridges vouchers and a few jam post wouldn’t go amiss.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours in utter disgust,
Mrs Beaten
p.s. My mother would like to point out that when we asked for our teapot to be refilled, it was returned having been topped up with boiling water alone, and therefore what we poured out was the colour of very pale urine.
