Afternoon Tea at The Turquoise Thistle

I was delighted when I received an invitation to the launch of the afternoon tea menu at Turquoise Thistle, it'd been on my list of places to try for a long time, so it was great to finally find a time to go.

The setting is fantastic, the dining room with large windows on to York Place offer plenty of natural light even though it was slightly dreich the day we were there. 

I was very impressed with all the savouries on the afternoon tea, rather than the usual sandwiches, we were presented with egg vol-au-vent, salmon on a tattie scone, cucumber on rye crispbread and ham & brie on a croissant. Everything was fantastic and I couldn't pick a favourite out of the lot.

The scone was fabulously fluffy, the shortbread was crunchy and buttery. We were off to a good start!! Unfortunately, I felt the sweets were a slight let down.. The lemon drizzle cake needed a bit more zing, the filo pastry on the fruit tartlet was slightly greasy and as the cranachan cheesecake was served in a tall shot glass it was much more cranachan and not really any cheesecake.  

The chocolate profiteroles had caught my attention from when the stand was delivered but maybe due to it having sat out for a good while, the pastry ended up a bit wet. The chocolate truffle looked promising but was a bit doughy and dry.

What was the most disappointing was that we didn't actually have TEA when our afternoon tea was served..With there being quite a large group of us, it's not always easy to get the timing right for things, but surely getting people's tea orders should be high on the list?! My tea didn't arrive until after I'd got through most of my savouries and although the menu promised a selection of loose leaf teas my earl grey was a tea bag.  Having served afternoon tea in a previous lifetime, I am a firm believer that 50% of an afternoon tea really does lie in the quality of the, well, TEA... You don't need to serve a large range, but you really should have both English Breakfast and Earl Grey as loose leaf.

Overall, I loved the savouries and look forward to finding a time to return for dinner and would happily return for afternoon tea if a few tweaks were made to the sweets.