The Sunday after beach week, I went to Elizabeth and Alexander’s English Tea Room in Bothell to celebrate Julie’s birthday. Our room was decked out with a fox hunt motif, complete with a framed photograph of famed hunter Winston Churchill cradling a tommygun, because foxes don’t deserve a fair chance.
It may well be that the English gorge themselves at tea time, or it could be that Americans have taken the idea of tea and a snack and expanded it to fit our all-encompassing appetites. The lack of fried butter makes it difficult to know for certain. All I know is that each table was presented with a veritable Everest of food stacked upon three plates, and it was our solemn duty to eat our way to the top and proclaim ourselves tearoom champions.
I’m not kidding. We had scones and crumpets and strawberry jam and whipped cream and lemon curd and lemon tea cakes and lemon tartlets and shortbreads and chocolate raspberry rum torte and fresh fruit and tea sandwiches: cream cheese and cucumber, chicken salad, smoked salmon. And because that wasn’t enough, Val also had cupcakes delivered by Cupcake Royale.
I had planned on doing something after tea, but ended up sugar crashing so hard that I napped the afternoon away.
But you didn’t have to deal with crust!
Stupid extra brown nutrient rich crusts, trying to make me eat them!
Having taken tea in Britain on more than one occasion, I can say with certainty that while the 3 tiered trays with sandwiches, scones/biscuits, and pastries are traditional, they are 1. not as circumferentially large as those, 2. the items are not as big as those, and 3. the plates are not piled to over-flowing like that. I mean, daaaaaaayum, those are some tea time snacks!
The question is, were they tasty?
~Aramada
Everything I tried was quite tasty, I would absolutely go back for another frilly girlish tea party!
I support this proposition.
Motion carries!
~Aramada
Let’s pick a date and do this thing!
I have ALWAYS wanted to do this. It looks delicious! How was the tea? Did you sneak the leftovers home in your purse? =D
The tea was good! It was nice going out with a group, because we could get a few different kinds of tea and share. No need to sneak home leftovers, they brought out boxes for people to bring the rest home.
English afternoon tea is SO not like that! I laughed because the scones were American scones and not English scones! (And none of those cakes are British!)
Reminds me of the one time the “English Pantry” in whichever suburbs it was in tried to make trifle and from the english recipe that called for “Jelly” they used Jam instead of Jello!
I had a feeling. If we’ve americanized Mexican food and Chinese food, why should English afternoon tea be any different? 😀