Tea Time Treat

For my "Birthday treat" we went to Fanhams Hall near Ware in Hertfordshire yesterday for Afternoon Tea.  This is our third AT so far this year hehe.  The first was via a Last Minute.com gift voucher.  There were only a few places we could go so we went to the nearest; a place called Barnsdale Hall Hotel and quite honestly, their idea of an Afternoon Tea was a disgrace. What a disappointment and a waste of money, even if it wasn't our money!

Anyway, once bitten, twice shy as they say and when we decided to celebrate our anniversary in the same way we chose very carefully and went to the lovely Attingham Hall  (Shropshire) for a really delightful afternoon's grazing through the sandwiches, home-made scones and lots of tiny cakes.  It was delicious.

It was a really lovely treat and we enjoyed it so much that we looked around the places nearer home for somewhere to do it all again for my birthday.  Despite living in the area for donkey's years I'd never heard of Fanhams Hall - the photos on their website looked lovely, and they were soooo quick to answer OH's emails and so accommodating about  our "picky" food requirements; we don't like fruit scones, fruit cake, salmon sandwiches - staple AT fodder which some places just say "it's that or nothing" about.  We booked. 

What a lovely place.  I wish the day had been prettier so that we could have explored the gardens more and taken a nicer photo than this one;

Afternoon Tea is taken in the lovely, peaceful Drawing Room.  The staff were attentive and helpful and our food requests were all sorted without us needing to go over it again.  Isn't it great when things work like that?

The sandwiches were all lovely.  We really just expected more plain scones as we didn't have fruit ones, but instead of the fruit ones there were some lavender ones - really delicious they were too!  Freshly made and still warm.

And at the top of the cake stand an assortment of delicious little cakes and pastries - we couldn't eat everything so the extras were boxed up for us to bring home - that's a treat for this evening, then!

Everything was so well done.  The Hall is a fabulous building.  The Drawing room was elegant and nicely furnished, with plenty of room between the groups of people.  The waitresses were helpful and attentive and the food was beautifully presented and tasted wonderful.  I'd definitely be happy to recommend Fanhams Hall as a venue for your nest treat!

If anyone would like to "employ" us as Afternoon Tea venue "testers", then I'm sure we'd be more than happy to accept hehehe

Sadly, it's back to the reality of me doing the "catering" today - which didn't get off to a good start because yesterday I forgot to make bread for this morning's breakfast toast  :(

Thanks for popping by, I hope your mouth is watering now.....