Afternoon tea is all about the details

As a food writer based in Ireland, I’m acutely aware that restaurants and cafés are under relentless pressure. Margins are tight, staffing is hard, costs keep climbing. I want places to succeed. I champion them when they get it right.

But there’s a particular kind of disappointment that comes when a place starts out strong and then quietly lets standards slide. I’ve lost count of the number of times this has happened to me.

As most people who ever met me know, I love afternoon tea. The ceremony, the specialty, the patisserie all make the visit to a hotel extra. The latest examples came from two hotels offering afternoon tea, and on those first visits everything aligned beautifully. These were not grand, showy affairs, but carefully considered experiences that understood what afternoon tea should be.

In both cases, the setting was key. One hotel offered tea in a private, elegant room, removed from the bustle of the day, while the other seated guests in a light-filled pavilion that was made for lingering conversation and quiet indulgence.

The sense of occasion was excellent in both hotels. Service matched the surroundings. Staff were present without hovering, knowledgeable without being scripted. Teas were explained, courses arrived at an unhurried pace and there was a genuine sense that guests were being looked after rather than processed.

It felt calm. Scones arrived warm, light and properly made, pastries were delicate and sandwiches were fresh and prepared with care. It was the kind of afternoon tea that didn’t rely on gimmicks but on getting the fundamentals right.

I left both hotels genuinely impressed, happy to recommend them and confident enough to write about the experience. At the time, they felt like places something worth returning to.

Unfortunately, in both cases, the experience had shifted into something far less memorable. The service, setting and food were a marked departure from what I had previously enjoyed.

At the first hotel (both are in Cork, though I won’t name them as I haven’t yet offered direct feedback), afternoon tea is now served in the main lobby. While the lobby itself is attractive, it is also busy and noisy, entirely at odds with the calm, cocooned experience afternoon tea from the past.

When I asked why we were seated there rather than in the dedicated tea room, we were offered the option to move, which we did.

It helped the atmosphere, but the food that followed failed to redeem the experience.

Brown bread topped with prawns arrived ice cold, and the pastries were indistinct and uninspired, bearing little resemblance to the imaginative, carefully executed offering of earlier visits.

The second hotel, once seating guests in its stunning pavilion setting, now serves afternoon tea in the main restaurant alongside the lunch crowd.

Again, the result was a noisy, distracting backdrop that stripped the occasion of its sense of escape.

The food was perfectly acceptable, but it lacked the finesse and thoughtfulness that had impressed me before. When I asked why we weren’t seated in the pavilion, I was told the decision had been made by the owner.

My heart sank, although the warmth and professionalism of the staff went some way towards softening the disappointment.

What frustrates me most is that these places proved they could do it.

They showed, at the start, a commitment to quality and consistency which might seem not glamorous, but it is everything.