Gosh has it been a minute (thanks COVID!) This is probably my first afternoon tea this year which sounds absolutely crazy, but here we are. As soon as the Tiffany Blue Box Cafe opened its doors in February this year I knew I had to go. Then hit covid and all its fun lockdown scares, so I eventually ended up calling them when I was ready in June, well it only took me 3 months to get a booking on a weekend, crazy!
The day finally came, cute clothes on, shoes sorted, appetite at “stage starving”, we ended up being a little late and they only have a 15-minute grace period but they managed to accommodate us after a little faffing around of “sorry ma’am we gave your table away”, after 3 months of waiting for this booking that table was mine and no one was going to take that away from me.
We got a table and the service was absolutely lovely, they treated us like we were family from the day, we had a corner table so felt socially distanced from others but some other tables did feel quite close together.
Let’s talk decor… yes it is as cute as in the pictures! They really took the whole blue box thing seriously and the cute quirks were exactly what I was expecting.
The food… we got the traditional afternoon tea priced at £69pp (we didn’t even look at the price before getting there oops). The chicken is the only thing that’s halal but you do need to pre order it when you book. We had to chop and change a few things as the beef is not halal so we swapped that for the chicken sandwich and the parmesan isn’t veggie so took that out too. Our waiter, again was lovely and really understanding of all our changing demands.
The sandwiches were very VERY (VERY) standard. The bread almost felt Tesco Value quality, which was such a shame. Nothing wrong with Tesco quality, but when you’re paying £70pp its not what you expect. Credit where due, the coronation chicken sandwich was kind of mind blowing (or maybe our expectations were floor high at this point so anything remotely decent would’ve blown our mind ha!)
The cakes… they certainly looked the part and this made me excited, who can get cakes wrong, right? Wrong! Their signature Tiffany Blue Egg lemon curd was tasteless! Literally tasted of air haha! The cheesecake was nice although the jelly on top was rock hard and made for messy eating (the textures just did not go together), the fruit tart was also pretty bland and didn’t really taste of anything either. So all in all meh.
The scones were probably the only saving grace. They were warm and soft and actually delicious. The clotted cream was a little too hard for the scones though and were crumbling due to it not being at room temperature – again, such a shame. Jams were lovely though and all in all good.
The tea was standard – they seemed really proud of the fact that the Tiffany Blend could not be found anywhere else in the whole of UK apart from in their cafe and the blend was created in New York and shipped directly to them. It was nice but again just green tea with a little bit more texture and fragrance.
It may seem like I just had a bad day and not finding anything good going for this experience but I paid £75pp (including service), that is an atrocious amount for a standard afternoon tea experience. I understand paying £££ at Dorchester or Landmark or Langham because it is an exceptional experience every single time. I wouldn’t pay more than £35 max for the tea at Tiffany Blue Box Cafe and if that makes me a horrible person then so be it.
While I’m here, here are some pics we took (there were a few hehe)
Hope you guys had better experiences, lots of love xxx