Cost – £49.50 for two people, including delivery (January 2021)
Parking and Access – This tea was taken in the inside area of the venue. There is one small step to enter the building. The toilet is up a flight of stairs with no alternative access. There is on-street parking available in front of the venue.
Background – Here we are again, back in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. And this time it is January, with cold weather and short days. An Afternoon Tea was definitely needed to cheer us up!
I still have a list of many Afternoon Teas that can delivered that I wrote up during the first lockdown. However, I thought I would also have a look on the internet to see if there was anything else that I had not spotted before.
Kettle and Crumb came up as a company delivering Afternoon Teas nationally. However, it stood out to me as the Tea included sandwiches. I was interested to see how well this would work, so we booked a delivery for the end of the week.
Contents per person – Five rectangular sandwiches (one each of egg mayonnaise, smoked salmon with cracked black pepper cream cheese, and three between two people of ham and of chicken with tarragon mayonnaise), a pork and caramelised onion sausage roll, a pork and chorizo sausage roll, a pork and stilton sausage roll, a small slice of stilton and broccoli quiche and a small slice of cheese and pepper quiche. One small/medium sized fruit scone, a mini jar of Tiptree strawberry jam and a tub of Rodda’s clotted cream. Two small fingers of both chocolate brownie and lemon cake, plus four small cubes of carrot cake. A packet between the two of us containing two English Breakfast teabags, two Darjeeling teabags and two Earl Grey teabags, all from Teamakers of London.
Options available – There are Vegetarian and Vegan options available for this Afternoon Tea.
Comments – The Afternoon Tea was delivered by DPD. It arrived near the start of the one-hour delivery slot we were given at the start of the day, which was around midday. It arrived in a sturdy box
with a label on it saying that it must be delivered today.
Inside the outer box, the whole box was filled with a wool like insulation material enclosed in plastic.
The contents were packed in four neat, recyclable, boxes with clear lids.
Below the last box, which contained the sandwiches, there was a freezer bag. The bag was still frozen solid, so the insulation had certainly done the trick.
There was also a card in an envelope which gave the contents of the Tea and instructions on storage and heating, etc.
We removed the four boxes and placed everything, apart from the cakes and jam, into the fridge to keep cool until we were ready to eat out Tea.
I have based my presentation score on the way the package was presented in the box. I was very impressed by the standard of packing and the state of the contents on arrival.
We used our brightly coloured teapot on this occasion, along with Cunard ship china mugs.
We used the tea bags that came with the Afternoon Tea, choosing the English Breakfast teabags. The tea had a good flavour and was a good strength for us.
We chose to serve the Afternoon Tea on our three-tier cake stand with square white plates.
As I mentioned earlier, we were particularly interested to see how the sandwiches would be. The instructions told us to take everything out of the fridge an hour before eating. We noted that the sandwiches were all made with fairly dense looking bread, which probably made them more resilient to travelling. There was a mix of white bread and a dark rye bread. The sandwiches were adequately well filled, with the chicken and tarragon being the most well filled, and the tastiest.
The savoury part of this Afternoon Tea was particularly good. In addition to the sandwiches, we each had three different sausage rolls and two small slices of quiche.
We had heated all of these up to the enclosed instructions, however, I felt the sausage rolls could have done with longer in the oven, as they were not really warm enough. All of the sausage rolls were tasty but my favourite was definitely the one with caramelised onion in it. The quiche slices were also good, but so thin they kept falling apart! It would have been better to have had a slightly larger slice of just flavour.
We also warmed the scones in the oven before serving them. They were on the small side of medium, and were quite well filled with fruit. They felt pretty fresh and tasted good.
The strawberry jam was a standard mini Tiptree strawberry jam, which is always a good bet. The clotted cream was the usual small tub of Rhodda’s, which is also always good. There was plenty of both for the size of scone.
Finally, the last box contained all the pieces of cake for the Tea.
In total, there were eight pieces of cake each. However, these were all cut pretty small. As there was just three types of cake, we felt it would have been better to have left the pieces in larger fingers rather than cut each piece in two. The lemon drizzle, which was our favourite, was cut into particularly tiny fingers.
All of the cakes were tasty and were good choices for something that needs to travel. They were all moist and fresh tasting. Just cut too small!
My service score is based on the service we received. This was efficient and contained the information we needed. We were particularly impressed by the insulation provided and the way the contents were packed inside the box.
| Savoury | 2.0 |
| Scone | 1.5 |
| Jam | 1.5 |
| Cream | 1.5 |
| Sweet (variety) | 1.5 |
| Sweet (quality) | 1.5 |
| Tea | 1.5 |
| Presentation | 2.0 |
| Service | 2.0 |
| Value | 1.5 |
| Total | 16.5 |
All opinions expressed in this review are my own. The photographs are all my own.
I remain completely anonymous and always pay for my Afternoon Teas. They are never gifted to me by the businesses reviewed.
I am the legal copyright holder of the content and images on this blog.
Sarnies Scones and Cakes 