Cost – £20.00 (£10 per person) plus delivery (May 2020)
Parking and Access – There is one step down to enter the outside area of the venue. The only toilets are situated inside and up a flight of stairs with no alternative access. There is on-street parking available in front of the building.
Background – I found Sophie’s Afternoon Teas and Cakes whilst doing a google search for Afternoon Tea deliveries. In normal times the company does Afternoon Tea catering for events. The company is based in the Newmarket area.
I emailed Sophie for details and got an almost instant, helpful reply, despite it being evening time. We soon had an Afternoon Tea booked and all details sorted. Payment was either cash on delivery or by BACS to their account.
Contents per person – Three rectangular sandwiches (cheese and pickle, ham and cucumber). One medium sized plain scone, a mini jar of strawberry jam and a tub of clotted cream. A slice of Victoria sponge cake, a piece of cherry compote flapjack and a chocolate brownie. Tea was provided by ourselves.
Options available – No options were available for this Tea
Comments – We arranged for this Afternoon Tea to arrive on a Saturday lunchtime. It arrived on time nicely packaged in a box with a window top.
As usual, we opened the box immediately to remove the items that needed to go in the fridge.
The rest was left in the box as we would be eating it later.
I have based my presentation score on the way the package was presented and the state it was in when it arrived, which was very good.
The tea was served in a brightly coloured teapot with a cat design on. This was accompanied by a milk jug matching the rest of the crockery used. We do have the matching teapot but decided it was just too big to use on this occasion!
We even got out the matching teacups and saucers.
I have scored the tea as 2.0 to keep in line with other scores for delivered Afternoon Teas.
We served the Afternoon Tea itself on our new two-tier circular cake stand with slate platters. One trip to a garden centre as soon as they were allowed to open and I came back with a new cake stand! The trip to the garden centre was actually for garden related equipment! Honestly!!
The sandwiches were included with the Afternoon Tea this time.
There is usually a ham and mustard sandwich but we requested it to be ham without mustard, which is what we received.
The sandwiches were a little variable in size, with two much larger sandwiches made with white bread and the rest made with brown bread. One ham sandwich was particularly small.
We warmed our scones up in the oven before serving them. They were medium sized and plain. They were reasonably fresh tasting.
The jam was a good standard mini jar, with plenty in each pot for our one scone. The clotted cream had been portioned out into a small plastic tub. At first, we didn’t think there was going to be enough. However, there was just about enough cream in the portion.
However, the cakes were the crowning glory. It was so nice to eat a decent slice of cake. I have really missed that during the lockdown.
The Victoria sponge was light and delicious. The slice was a reasonable size, though I definitely could have eaten more!! The cherry compote flapjack was a good sized piece each. It was really tasty and had a layer of cherry compote through the middle. We both enjoyed it very much. Finally, the chocolate brownie was excellent. It was slightly gooey and very chocolatey. Very good indeed. I might need to order more of these as Sophie sell boxes of brownies!!
As usual, I have based my service score on the service we received from the company, which was efficient and accurate.
| Savoury | 1.0 |
| Scone | 1.0 |
| Jam | 1.5 |
| Cream | 1.5 |
| Sweet (variety) | 2.0 |
| Sweet (quality) | 2.0 |
| Tea | 2.0 |
| Presentation | 2.0 |
| Service | 2.0 |
| Value | 2.0 |
| Total | 17.0 |
Sarnies Scones and Cakes 