Restaurants

By Charmaine Mok

Hours spent in someone else’s living room with a bunch of complete strangers – is this how you want to spend your Sunday afternoon? In fact, it’s a refreshing experience. Throw in waves of expertly made baked treats and sandwiches, bottomless pots of tea, unmatchable hospitality and a tiny toy terrier named Oliver and you’d be hardpressed to favour an expensive hotel over this new ‘underground tea room’.

The concept of operating a restaurant or café in one’s own living room is hardly new. In this case, the inspiration for the name comes from the famed ‘private supper club’ in Paris, the Hidden Kitchen, which has been running for more than two years. What makes this operation different, however, is that it’s one of the first to exclusively offer afternoon tea (others, such as the famed MsMarmiteLover’s Underground Restaurant, offers tea only on occasions). Like many underground eateries running in London, the location and, sometimes, even the identity of the host is kept top-secret.

‘Lady Gray’, an American whose prim and proper pseudonym belies a warm and affable host in the flesh, has travelled the world, so she knows a thing or two about good tea service. Her culinary interest is written on her sleeve – or rather, on the wall of her and her husband’s small but elegant living room, which is flanked with a gargantuan bookshelf heaving with an impressive array of cookery books.

The afternoon tea here is an intimate affair, as a normal session is reserved for a mere six individuals, all of whom are seated together on one table – if you don’t fancy rubbing elbows with your fellow guests, then this isn’t for you. On arrival, we were greeted with a linen-lined basket of oven-warm American-style cheddar ‘biscuits’ (more like soft scones), which were light and moreish; they were enjoyed on the terrace in fair weather, until we were summoned to the cosy living room.

Individual plates of finger sandwiches – soft white bread encasing traditional fillings such as (marinated) cucumber and cream cheese, honey ham with Jarlsberg cheese, smoked salmon with punchy fresh chives and more cream cheese – are brought out. Soon after, a mountain of extra sandwiches arrive in a basket; the generosity is astounding. (Our only complaint is that they don’t do doggy bags, which seems a genuine waste.)

Next are some delicate scoops of mango and pineapple sorbet with lime zest, a refreshing palate cleanser. These allow you a breather before the arrival of fluffy, freshly-baked scones with proper clotted cream and strawberry and blueberry preserves – the scones were as good as any we’ve had in England’s finest tea rooms.

The treats continued to appear: moist heart-shaped toffee brownies with dollops of cream, an appropriately zingy lemon drizzle cake, obscenely buttery shortbread and ethereally light cupcakes with buttercream frosting.

All guests were thoroughly defeated at this point, but Lady and Earl Gray soldiered on, offering own-made, tea-scented chocolate truffles and a pot of soothing flowering jasmine tea.

In a time when scores of arrivistes are jumping on the ‘underground’ eatery movement, it’s reassuring to experience something as genuinely charming as the Hidden Tea Room, where such a high level of care and dedication is put towards every aspect. If Lady Gray were to open a fully licensed tea room in the city, she’d be very successful indeed – but we think this would also negate the very charm of this intimate affair.

Time Out London issue 2036: August 27 - Sept 2 2009