Hope everyone is having a great Easter break and the fluffy bunny brought you plenty of chocolatey treats.
I spent my Good Friday getting a rather flouncy chocolate fix with my cousin and her husband. By now you must be bored of hearing about the delights and the dreamy chocolates made by Paul.A.Young. My cousin and I are total fangirls when it comes to those cheeky little chocolates. We’ve been on a brownie and chocolate making courses, chocolate tours and pounced on any new product that has come out of the dream chocolate kitchen. When we clocked that Paul A Young was partnering with The Park Room at Grosvenor House, A JW Marriott Hotel to create a chocolate afternoon tea, we knew we had to visit and what better time then at Easter?
The Park Room is decked out in a beautiful sage green, which compliments the tea service beautifully, even down to the embossed card sleeves to hide the unsightly pink sweetener sachets. All in the details! I really want a tea service like this, just so pretty.
The afternoon tea had been carefully selected to have chocolate elements running throughout the afternoon tea. Such a beautiful menu we couldn’t wait to tuck in, in a ladylike fashion of course.
We started with an amuse bouche of finely diced pineapple, melon and mango in a passion fruit juice to cleanses the palate before the many chocolate delights. Refreshing to get the ball rolling.
The tea that matched the afternoon tea was a caramel and milk chocolate tea which was a changed from the cocoa nib tea on the menu as this tea apparently worked better with the different chocolate elements. There were little nuggets of caramel melted into the fragrant tea, giving a rich buttery aroma.
Two tiers of sandwiches appeared with a fantastic selection of filling, different to the norm. Loch Fyne smoked salmon, Clarence Court free-range egg mayonnaise, Cold water prawns in a Marie Rose sauce (which were delicious and succulent) and my favourite was the smoked chicken with tarragon sandwiches, a nice flavoursome note of smoke to the tender chicken. Thick slices of ham and roast beef also made up the sandwich selection. Finally on the menu was salted cucumber and Venezuelan chocolate sandwich, which to be honest ours didn’t actually have any chocolate in, I only remembered that it should have had some in after the event sadly. Was a shame that we had missed on them as was looking forward to them.
After polishing off the tasty finger sandwiches, there was a bit of a wait before our scones were delivered, it wasn’t a huge problem as we were in no hurry but we did have to ask a waitress to bring them out for us. The warm scones came out nestled in their own blanket to keep warm, perfect to load up with a creamy pillow of clotted cream and the sirens call that brought us to the afternoon tea – CHOCOLATE SEA SALTED CARAMEL. Jam and curds are so overrated. This has ruined all other scone eating experiences for me. Why have a standard seedy raspberry jam when you can go for its sexy cousin of chocolate sea salted caramel. So so so very good.
After using a borderline obscene about of chocolate sea salted caramel we moved up the tiers to the tea pastries.
An Orange, English Honey and Geranium Ganache.
A Pistachio and Raspberry Slice.
Earl Grey Tea Chocolate Tart with Salted Lemon Truffle.
Chocolate Shortcake with Chocolate Ganache and Raspberries.
A Traditional Battenburg Cake Slice.
All the cakes were beautifully balanced and not overly sweet (which was a good thing after the amount of chocolate sea salt caramel we had just had!) and as there were two of each pastries between the three of us, we were able to have a satisfactory nibble on all the treats without fighting over them.
To end the afternoon tea we were given three of Paul’s most popular (and our favourite) chocolates to take home with us. The sinful 85% Ecuadorian truffle, my all time favourite Passion Fruit Curd (the sharp tropical burst from the silky smooth curd is the stuff dreams are made of) and my cousin’s all-time favourite the Sea Salted Caramel (can you see why the scone course was such a hit!)
A perfect end to a lovely afternoon tea. The chocolate afternoon tea will be only running for a small about of time to check it out soon before it’s too late. You will be sorry if you miss out on the chocolate sea salt caramel. I know I’m looking now into how to fill a bathtub with chocolate sea salted caramel…..
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