*I was gifted the family entrance from ZSL London Zoo. As always though, all thoughts and words are my own.
Happy afternoon tea week! Who’d have thought, a whole week dedicated to what is, essentially, our national pass time – afternoon tea. Now, you know me, I don’t need any excuse to stuff my face with tea and cake but it’d be rude to let this week go by without acknowledgement. So, isn’t it a good job I went to Vivi at Centrepoint recently to try out their new afternoon tea!
One of my favourite things about the afternoon tea selection here is that there’s no need to share! Yep, you get one of these little tea towers each. There’s a selection of five different types of finger sandwich. A fruit and a plain scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream and a selection of five mini sweet treats too. That’s not all though, there’s even candy floss to top it all off.
The sandwich selection was really nice although I was expecting some strong flavours that didn’t quite come through. There was smoked salmon and cream cheese, cucumber and dill butter, egg mayonnaise with mustard cress, coronation chicken, mint and mango chutney and roast beef and horseradish. The coronation chicken was definitely my favourite but it was always going to be a winner, I love coronation chicken.
The scones were soft, fluffy and full of flavour. The strawberry jam was nice and fruity and the clotted cream lovely and smooth. Clotted cream on scones is just the best. I only actually tried the plain scone (I brought the other one home for Tom, who rated it very highly) but I used all of the jam and cream so I’d definitely need a top up on them before I tucked into the other one.
I’m not the biggest fan of battenberg or macarons so I was always going to skip over those, but the chocolate eclair was incredible. It had chocolate cream inside it too and I could have easily eaten another twelve of them in one sitting. It wasn’t the most ladylike thing to eat but it was totally worth the impolite moment of shoving it straight into my face. The victoria sponge felt super fancy too with the little dot of gold leaf on the strawberry on top. It also didn’t disappoint on taste. As well as the blackberry macaron and the teeny tiny battenburg (I was a big fan of how this looked but can’t stand marzipan) I took the carrot cake home too. Tom was very happy that I’d brought him a box of goodies away with me. He highly recommended the cakes.
There’s only one way to finish off a nice afternoon tea… cocktails! The cocktail menu at Vivi takes inspiration from musical icons and my choice was named after a song by The Beatles.
It was absolutely delicious, as I’m sure you can imagine, but I’m not sure I’ve yet found a gin cocktail that I haven’t been enamoured with – even for just a short time! Also, the fact it was garnished with flowers made me very happy.
Vivi is an absolutely beautiful restaurant serving up 1920s, art deco, Palm Spring vibes. I fell in love a little when I walked in. The views aren’t much to write home about as it’s in the middle of a building site at the minute but with it being about ten steps away from Tottenham Court Road station it’s such a fantastic location to catch up with friends.
I’m a big fan of afternoon tea so if you want to read some more about it check out best friend’s day afternoon tea, afternoon tea on the Thames, Mad Hatter’s afternoon tea and Pret a Portea at The Berkley.
