Afternoon Tea at Sketch London

Hello folks!

How has everyone been? I've not done a post in far too long but life has been hectic! Martyn and I have started the long process of house hunting for our first real home, planning our trip to ArcTanGent festival in Bristol and our trip to London to catch up with old friends and family.

While down in London we caught up with my very best friend Sarah Monks aka Ginge. We met at Uni over a decade ago and we've been best pals since, she and her husband live in Mildura, Australia these days but we are still close and do our very best keeping in touch using Skype, Pinterest and Whatsapp - the wonder of modern technology! She was back in the UK for her brothers wedding and came to meet me in London for a few days. Ginge is pregnant, expecting their first bundle of joy in a couple months so as a treat/birthday present I took her for Afternoon Tea at Sketch.

The Gallery

If you follow some of the same bloggers as me on Instagram you'll probably know where I am talking about but if not then I'll explain that Sketch isn't you average Afternoon Tea venue, it's not a fancy bar or a nice hotel it is a 'destination place' created by Mourad “Momo” Mazouz and his team for people to go and experience food, art and music. You can find it just off Regent Street on Conduit Street in a converted 18th century building. There are a selection of eccentrically decorated room including The Glade, The Parlor and The Gallery - where we had our Afternoon Tea.

The Glade

The Gallery is part of a long-term programme of artist-conceived restaurants. The currant Artist in Residence is David Shrigley, a British visual artist who lives and works in Glasgow. He has 239 new works displayed across the room and created ceramic tableware featuring his distinctive mordant drawings and texts. The milk jugs have dreams written on them and the sugar bowl reassures you that 'it's ok' one side of it but then 'it's not ok' on the other.

All of this is set in a beautiful interior created India Mahdavi, we were surrounded by marble flooring, bespoke marshmallow pink velvet furnishings and a gold leaf backdrop to the bar. Pure luxury!

I had given them the heads up that they had a veggie and a prego coming for afternoon tea the week before and they had made special arrangements for us. Our lovely waiter explained the menu to us and the tweaks that they had made for our dietary requirements, checking if Ginge was eating smoked salmon and how I felt about gelatin.

After we had ordered our tea, earl grey for me and ceylon and rose for the ginger one, we settled in and our individual tea stands were brought out to us. My stand included egg and cress sandwiches with a tiny fried quale egg on top, asparagus, cucumber and ricotta sandwiches, lemon meringues, apricot panna cotta and fruit and cream boats.

Everything that passed my lips was beautiful and delicate, we sipped our way through our pots of tea, chatted and people watched. Our waiter soon came and took our scone order and came out warm with a plain one for me and fruit one for Ginge with clotted cream, a fig jam and a strawberry jam and fresh tea for us both.

We sat there for 2 hours having a proper catch up, eating tiny cakes and drinking all the tea in such a beautiful and relaxing environment. The atmosphere was calm and not at all pretentious, even with sommeliers pouring pink champagne from a height into fabulous glasses.

After all that tea before we left we popped up to the iconic Sketch bathrooms, known for the colourful lit ceiling and pod tiolets. It's also the ideal selfie spot with amazing light and  domed mirrors...

As you can tell I loved it and although when I first looked into going I was tentative about spending £45pp on tea and cake** I would say it was worth it. We had endless tea, as many cakes and sandwiches as we like and were surrounded in a truly setting and lets face it, if we'd been going out for cocktails and dancing we'd easily spent that in London!  

If you are in London I would totally recommend checking it out! 

**Special shout out to my amazing little sister for the voucher that covered my half of the bill for my birthday, love you little bear!