Bond St. Tea Rooms

I took my dearest friend to Scoff & Banter in Oxford St last Friday for her birthday. From the minute we stepped into this elegant place and was greeted by the staff, so very welcoming, into the lifts..seated in the Tearoom by such a lovely waiter named Chabna.

Just looking at the menu..2 items from starter, mains and desserts...

The food was wonderful, we had a miniature lamb chop with broccoli, kale and garlic sauce..was in heaven..

The scones  were small, light and fluffy, came with a pot of jam..

The sandwiches neat and compacted and you have a choice of a Gluten free menu..Yaayyy.

I dont drink tea...but I choose the decaf Earl grey and almond milk..I am hooked.

The waiter pandered to out every need.. So attentive, so sweet and so hospitable.

We sat listening to cool jazz vibes as we dined like Kings..

Yes I am going again this Saturday with friends..

Very satisfying afternoon.

Lulu

I took my dearest friend to Scoff & Banter in Oxford St last Friday for her birthday. From the minute we stepped into this elegant place and was greeted by the staff, so very welcoming, into the lifts..seated in the Tearoom by such a lovely waiter named Chabna.

Just looking at the menu..2 items from starter, mains and desserts...

The food was wonderful, we had a miniature lamb chop with broccoli, kale and garlic sauce..was in heaven..

The scones  were small, light and fluffy, came with a pot of jam..

The sandwiches neat and compacted and you have a choice of a Gluten free menu..Yaayyy.

I dont drink tea...but I choose the decaf Earl grey and almond milk..I am hooked.

The waiter pandered to out every need.. So attentive, so sweet and so hospitable.

We sat listening to cool jazz vibes as we dined like Kings..

Yes I am going again this Saturday with friends..

Very satisfying afternoon.

Lulu

An afternoon tea with fantastic hot dishes and original finger sandwich, very attentive and knowledgeable staff.

You can get all sorts of afternoon teas these days . Me--I'm a traditionalist- I tend to prefer the basic sandwich/scones/cakes & pastries sort of thing but there are a large number of variations on the theme. Scoff and Banter ( awful name btw- doesn't exactly raise expectations on how the place looks and behaves) offers a basic product that starts with tiny savoury dishes, wanders into an array of often quite unusual sandwiches, rolling on into an array of small scones which includes quite a few unusual takes (but not strangely enough the most usual ones) and ending with an array of cakes , pastries and small desserts. You get to choose two from each section and though the items are small there's no way most people are going to go away from here hungry. And that's even though they don't do what some of the best practitioners do and top up things that even look like they might be running out. The tea room is basically an upstairs lounge in the Radisson Blu hotel , so though the address is Oxford Street, you won't see it unless you realise that and also that the entrance is up a side road. The lounge is fairly large, dark wood, decently comfortable and certainly today pretty quiet. Its decent but a million miles from the overt opulence of say the Ritz, and I wouldn't send anyone here for a special birthday. Staff is a little sparse which tells you that they weren't expecting lots of people. That said service was timely and pleasant enough. The thing that didn't work too well for me is the food. Its not the menu/idea that's adrift, its the quality and flavours of what they deliver. We did find that the initial savouries sounded good but weren't very exciting at all and were served lukewarm. Then as the meal progressed towards stuff prepared in advance , it got a bit better, and the puds were actually fine. They didn't cover themselves with glory on the admin either. We had vouchers for the basic afternoon tea but they had other offers, priced a little higher which get you a glass of champagne or Prosecco. We asked for the Prosecco, only to find at the end that instead of the printed £5 surcharge pp they charged £9 pp. Apparently-and they said this without as much as a smile- if you go in there with a voucher they charge more for the Prosecco add-on than the menu price! Weird and naturally enough I demurred and equally naturally they reduced the price to the logical amount without ever giving the impression that they understood that there was little logic behind what they had tried to do. Afternoon Tea is a genteel product that has turned into a hugely competitive industry and standards and prices vary wildly. What S&B deliver -can't bring myself to write that name- is not great quality I'm afraid. My wife, a real afternoon tea aficionado, would name you a dozen places within a couple of tube stops that offer a much more memorable experience than this, enough to make you feel that if you're going to leave the place absolutely stuffed then at least you're stuffed with things you really enjoyed eating. The key thing about guilty pleasures is that they have to be pleasures, and this place have had a good idea to which they don't do justice.