The St. Ermin's Tea Lounge — Restaurant in London

Very frustrating experience!

I was thrilled to bring my girlfriend to this supposedly wonderful place to celebrate our anniversary - This was honestly the most disappointing 'afternoon tea' we've experienced in London so far.

⚠⚠ First of all, for all the readers to be aware: The photos shown on Google are VERY misleading! ⚠⚠

We have been welcomed by a very professional French waiter, who perfectly explained the menu and the food stand - We wished he would have stayed longer as we were very pleased with him.

On the stand, the sandwiches were fine (nothing extraordinary) but the pastries were definitely below average (too sweet, too fattening and above all tasteless). The 'Paris-Brest' (if we can call it this way) was absolutely AWFUL - the cream tasted like butter and nothing like what the cream of such a pastry should taste like (praline) Again, very misleading ..

The scone, which arrived a few minutes later, were overcooked - By far, the worst scones we ever had (not smooth). For an establishment of such a standing, I was also expecting the waiter to come and ask to change our plates and cutlery between the savoury and sweet part.

But hold on ... the worst part is coming. As if we were not already on edge, a family with several kids came on the first floor and it literally became a DISASTER. (We don't remember being said the floor would turn into a playground for close to an hour..?) It seems like none of the manager had the decency to ask the parents to calm their kids down. So obviously, the situation kept escalating but no one was bothered to ask us if this noise disturbed us / if we wanted to be seated somewhere else. This was extremely irritating and unprofessional.

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We enjoyed our afternoon tea. We booked about a week in advance. The scones with clotted cream and jam- both regular and the gluten free- were the Highlight- soft and warm and filling. The room is lovely and I like the flower motif chandeliers. The chairs were comfortable and they did a nice job accommodating my gluten allergy (celiac) . I got an equal amount of food as my non-gf spouse. My favorite teas were the vanilla rooibos and the mango. My husband’s favorite were the Bora Bora (very fruity) and the Chai. The bathroom downstairs was very clean and well-appointed with lotion, hand towels as well as dryers. The improvement area could be that we had to wait awhile to order and several of the sweet items my husband received on his regular platter should be naturally gluten free, such as French macarons, so it’s kinda weird they don’t just bake all of those in the gf kitchen and then bring those needed in the regular kitchen when necessary. We also didn’t care for a couple of the sandwiches- my husband doesn’t care for cheese and there was a cheese sandwich and although I normally like ham and roast beef, I didn’t enjoy either of those sandwiches, and the gf carrot cake was dry and terrible. They should try the gf recipethat’s made with pineapple for...

I love afternoon tea and have been making it my mission to try all the ones offered in NYC so I was excited to see how London compared.

First of all, this hotel is gorgeous. Just screams class all the way. The tea lounge is pretty small and intimate and decorated perfectly IMO. I thought the afternoon tea was good value for money at £43/pp for the champagne option. The coronation chicken and crayfish sandwiches were the best and not something I’ve come across at afternoon tea in NYC. The scones are served hot as in they don’t even come on the tier, they will check with you as to when you want them served. I usually hate raisin scones but I ate every morsel of mine with copious amounts of jam and clotted cream.

All the desserts save one were really good. The outlier dessert was just comically bad, like it didn’t even sound good but we ate as much of it as we could 😂. Not really a critique, but there aren’t like pages and pages of tea options which personally, I prefer as I get easily overwhelmed with too many options. I enjoyed everything else and would definitely come back. Also, we weren’t rushed at all which I really appreciated. Our server, Tierney (sp?) was wonderful but it really was a group effort, all the...