Royal Afternoon Tea - Browns, Manchester

Evening. First of all, I need to confess that this review should have gone live way sooner than it has, but unfortunately let's say 'someone turned the fan on' at work, and I've been a very busy one indeed! Straight to my aid was my scone scoffing homegirl Lee, who has once again done a lovely little write up of our trip. Have a read.

A while ago Rachel and I treated ourselves to a beautiful afternoon tea at Browns to cheer up an otherwise miserable week; it was a heavenly afternoon so we were very excited to be invited recently to try their Royal afternoon tea to celebrate the Queen's 90th birthday.

Now let me be clear, this afternoon tea is not made by the Queen nor do I believe it has been served to her, however I am certain she would love it if she got the chance to try it!

In the spirit of celebrating her maj's big day we started with the delicious cocktail that comes with this afternoon tea. A vodka based treat called British Royal. This was fruity and yet comfortingly boozy, a triumph!

The presentation of the afternoon tea itself was perfect and we got stuck straight into the brioche roll sandwiches, a great selection of coronation chicken, free range egg and baby watercress, and smoked salmon with chive and lemon cream cheese. The salmon in particular was amazing!

Now, onto the cakes which are of course the main event. You can't have afternoon tea without scones, and these did not disappoint. Served warm, with rich clotted cream and fresh strawberry jam. Little pots of strawberry and Pimms jelly kept the regal theme going, and the Earl Grey cake was delicate and delicious.

We also got to try what turned out to be (direct quote from Rach here) "The best profiterole I have ever eaten", for those of you not new to Dolly's blog you will know she eats a lot of puddings so this is high praise indeed. In fact the excitement caused by these salted caramel treats caused a very unfortunate gaffe in which I accidentally implied our waiter was over weight from eating too many of these. Clearly I did not mean this but in my sugar induced frenzy I could not form articulate conversation! Luckily he was a star who found it far funnier than me, and he took excellent care of us both.

We had a fantastic afternoon in this luxurious location, laughing, eating, offending staff (sorry again) and hiding from end of days style rain! I believe this special afternoon tea is due to end shortly but having tried two different ones now I would highly recommend you get down to Browns and stuff your face, you won't be sorry you did.

Thanks for having us!

Disclaimer: We were invited by Brown's to sample their latest afternoon tea. We were under no obligation to say nice things, and I'm fairly confident they did not expect us to accidentally insult their staff.