The Celebrating the Half Century Tea- Monday 21st October 2017
Low Wood Bay Resort and Spa, Windermere, Cumbria £16.50 for Afternoon Tea
Half Term was upon us and so time for a celebratory afternoon tea. W and I felt that as we were celebrating completing the half century of teas we would splash out a bit and go for somewhere we felt would be upmarket. The Low Wood Bay as a place to stay comes highly recommended so we decided to go there.
Now without generalising too much and trying to be fair we did book at the wrong time but what a let-down. The place is a building site outside as they add more to their facilities, parking is round the back and you must roam among building debris, construction vehicles and muddy paths to get near the place. Inside you navigate a maze of corridors until you find Reception and be led to your table. It is then that the newly refurbished interior can start to soothe and relax. Pre-Raphaelite art on the walls and minimal yet classic place setting and a view of the lake to quiet my mental agitation.
And so we sat for 40 minutes. No food. Admittedly the tea we were brought was proper leaves and there was a nice little interlude of steeping and pouring, but not enough occupation for hungry persons like us.
When the tea came the sandwiches were instantly whipped away without comment, whilst the cakes were set before us. We knew what was wrong, they had suddenly realised that the sandwiches were not vegetarian. It was a further 10 minutes before any sandwiches were set before us. Torture! Hunger! So we had a half of scone each to put us on (more of them later).
The sandwiches they returned to us were obviously made in a hurry, but had still taken ages to come. All were on nice fresh bread, but none were seasoned and the fillings were unimaginative. We had booked two weeks in advance, noting our vegetarian requirements, so were anticipating good things and we were disappointed. The cucumber sandwich was chunkily filled and would have benefited greatly from a dash of salt and the egg mayo was too ‘eggy’ for me and again needed a good dash of salt and pepper. The final cheese and pickle was ok because of the pickle, but it did taste like it was Branston and usually in more upmarket establishments I would expect a chutney rather than a generic slather of commercial chopped veg.
Following on, the cakes were a scarce bunch. And the size of each portion made it tricky to even think about a cake strategy, as blink, and they were gone. A tiny raspberry and mascarpone tart had short, crumbly sweet pastry and the mascarpone was airy and a good mix with a tart raspberry. The choux bun was filled to bursting with cream and had a thick chocolate top decorated idiosyncratically with meringue pieces. My final choice of Victoria sponge was not split evenly and the top half had too much cake, which made it glaringly obvious that the cake on its own was quite dry. The jam and cream filling was nice though.
Finally we rounded on the second half of our scone. Buy this time we knew what to expect and ladled lashings of jam and cream on top to make a big fat scone. We needed it to disguise the supporting disc as it was claggy, doughy, not sweet and decidedly not buttery. A very lacklustre ending indeed.
We sat for a while, nosy-ing at a wedding party who were being escorted precariously across the busy main road to a boating reception. But we soon tired of the other patrons of the room plonking themselves directly in front of us to stare out of the window too, without so much as an ‘excuse me, do you mind?’ and made our way to the bar to pay.
A bit of a glum one, this tea. Let’s hope that the next one is a bit more special eh?
Overall marks (out of 5 stars)
Service: ** Slow and rather disorganised
Amount of Food: **1/2 Not impressive for the price
Quality of Food: ** Disappointingly average
Value for money: ** Not really, even given the premium for its location
Comments: ‘Elegant surroundings but the cucumber is too chunky’ ‘ can’t argue there’s not enough cream in these choux buns’
The website is here http://englishlakes.co.uk/low-wood-bay/ they are on Trip Advisor here https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g186330-d451074-Reviews-Low_Wood_Bay_Resort_Spa-Windermere_Lake_District_Cumbria_England.html
They are also on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram
And my suggested track for today’s tea is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBumgq5yVrA
helenwedgwood 