If you’ve been reading my blog for long enough then you’ll know that I love anything quirky and that I am partial to an afternoon tea. So when I was given a gift voucher for my birthday I happily exchanged it for the Science Afternoon Tea at The Ampersand Hotel in London.
If you’re looking for quirky afternoon tea in London, The Ampersand is the perfect location. Situated a short walk from both The Natural History Museum and The Science Museum in South Kensington, the hotel offers not only a science afternoon tea but also a Jurassic tea – a nod to the dinosaurs at The Natural History Museum.
There are five different menus for the science afternoon tea – adult, kids, vegetarian, vegan and gluten free. I was glad to be able to see the vegetarian menu before booking.
After being seated we were offered a Jing Tea and then were given a small ‘science kit’ with instructions for making our own fizzy lemonade.
Of course this was absolutely a fun and entertaining way to wait for your food! Yes the lemonade had a bit of an artificial taste to it but hey, it was super quirky!
Shortly after we finished our lemonades, the food arrived. Nick went for the adult (aka meat eater) option and mine was vegetarian. The only difference between the two were the savouries. Mine included a mini quiche, vegetable brioche, tomato and cream cheese swiss roll and an egg mayo sandwich. We were offered more savouries but I didn’t have the stomach space.
Before we could eat though, we were treated to a little ‘performance’ where the waiter poured dry ice into the dish below one of the desserts. Who doesn’t love a bit of dry ice magic?!
The scone layer of the tea included two scones per person, your usual jam and cream topping PLUS a tube of passionfruit curd. We also had test tubes on the table. These contained freeze dried raspberry, freeze dried pineapple and crunchy chocolate pearls, just to add a little more pizzazz to your scone.
As with most afternoon teas, the desserts are the highlight. For this quirky science afternoon tea we were presented with a caramel chocolate & raspberry planet (the dry ice dish), an apricot, hazelnut & almond moon cake with honey chocolate spaceman and a blueberry & coconut macaron with a pipette of lemon sauce in the side of it. There was also a blood orange & cherry jelly Petri dish.
The most fun element of dessert was the chocolate dinosaurs hidden within chocolate soil. This was presented to us in a small wooden box which we then had to ‘dig’ for using a paint brush, like proper palaeontologists!
We had a really fun afternoon and enjoyed experiencing a true quirky afternoon tea in London.
If you liked this post then you might enjoy my other afternoon tea experiences.
