59 Reviews
Hotel Lutetia, Paris
Paris|1.2km from Gare Montparnasse
What else would you do on a wet, blustery, rainy March afternoon in Paris, but pamper yourself with a leisurely high tea at the wonderful Lutetia Hotel? My daughter and I booked a 3pm slot and having deliberately foregone lunch, we arrived hungry & right on time. We were seated immediately by a very efficient & kind hostess beneath the highly decorative glass roof in Le St-Germain and ordered the set afternoon tea menu for 65€ with Blue of London tea for me and a delicious thick hot chocolate for her. Our drinks arrived promptly and we chatted as we waited for the pièce de résistance: 3 savoury and 7 sweet items. After another 35 minutes of waiting, our stomachs finally stopped rumbling. Obviously chef patissier Nicolas Guercio's creativity wowed us, especially the Crab with yuzu sansho, daikon infused with grapefruit on the savoury side, while the Pineapple and green cardamom sorbet vied with the Scones clotted cream and raspberry jam (memories from my childhood!) on the sweet side. What wowed us much less was the fact that we were asked to vacate our table at 4:50pm! Not only had we waited 40 minutes to actually eat our afternoon tea, but now we were being rushed out after an hour and 10 minutes! Nowhere on the website was there mention that you have under 2 hours to consume your afternoon tea. So future afternoon tea amateurs, beware, there's no such thing as a leisurely afternoon tea at the Lutetia!
111 Reviews