The Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong by Big Fil

I'm a big fan of afternoon tea in a fancy hotel. It's a very civilised and relaxing way to spend an afternoon. Hong Kong has a few major hotels offering afternoon tea and after searching around on the Internet we settled on the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel in Tsim Sha Sui.


The Peninsula doesn't take bookings for tea and we arrived a little bit later than intended. We seemed to have arrived at the busiest time of the afternoon (around 3.30) and so had to line up for almost an hour for a table. Fortunately it's quite a good spot to stand around and people watch while listening to the small orchestra playing on an upstairs balcony.


The tea service is one of the fancier that I have seen, all silver plated jugs and tea pots. A moderate selection of teas was available, from memory I had the Jasmine and Hungry Pete the Earl Grey.


The food came out on a three tier tower, with the sweets on top, sandwiches in the middle and fruit scones on the bottom.


The scones were ok but probably the least impressive of the offerings, being a little dense and not having the light and fluffy texture which I prefer. Also somewhat strangely given it was tea for two we received three scones.


The sandwiches were my favourites. The selection included the classic cucumber in white bread, smoked salmon and a creamy egg (I think, having neglected to note it down). These all had the crusts removed, which is always cute, and were delicately flavoured.


I was almost expecting (or maybe just hoping) that the sweets would include tastes of a few Asian style deserts or cakes, and they did include a sample of Portuguese style egg tarts. It did also include a couple of macaroons, however, which seem to be taking over everywhere at the moment. Now while I don't mind macaroons they do seem to be the new cupcakes, trendy, available everywhere and not cheap.


Overall
A good experience with nice but not stupendous food in a very pleasant setting. My favourite part of the experience was surreptitiously watching the variety of people indulging in afternoon tea - cross-generational family gossip sessions, recovery sessions from strenuous shopping expeditions,(possibly secret) rendezvous and tourists like ourselves.

Address
Salisbury Road,
Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon Hong kong