Marks and Spencer serves a good afternoon tea.

Anonymous wrote:Would not describe high tea as a light meal! When my great grandma made it, you got a fried egg, bacon, sausage, bread and butter, cheese, and cakes.

I’m an American living in England.

I’ve never seen or heard high tea being used. But it is what American call dinner or supper. The evening meal. My English freinds regularly call this meal tea. Just tea. So like, I’ll have a play date and a mom will ask me if I am serving tea. (Dinner) or if they should pick up their kid before or after tea. Kids and adults still use this phrasing. Supper is used to refer to a heavier and maybe later evening meal. But I’m not sure on this!

You want “afternoon tea”. It is served in places from 3pm-6pm usually. It’s like a pretty light meal before you’d have a later “supper”. It is an experience. You are brought a tray of goodies and your tea.

It is not the same as just popping into a cafe and buying a scone and a pot of tea. This is nice too, and you can do this in almost all department and grocery stores.

A cream tea is when you get a tea and a scone with clotted cream and jam. It is more popular in Devon and Cornwall.

Would not describe high tea as a light meal! When my great grandma made it, you got a fried egg, bacon, sausage, bread and butter, cheese, and cakes.

No one cares what you wear to tea in any of these hotels. They only care about the tips.

At Harry's Bar inside the Savoy Hotel (its mainly for guests) at cocktail hour you can find drunk Americans wearing cocktail dresses with untied docksider shoes. No joke. Also, no one cares.

FYI, “high tea” =/= fancy, but quite the opposite. It designates a supperlike light meal, not a fancier and more refined spread of cakes.

Anonymous wrote:The Orangerie at Kensington Gardens.

We’ve done this several times with kids. Perfect.

Sketch.

Anonymous wrote:Brown's hotel

It's lovely, and I've been there several times, but it's not casual. You can wear pants, but jeans would be out of place.

OP Fortnum & Mason has a couple of place for tea and the one on the ground floor is casual (the top floor is more formal).

Brown's hotel

There are a lot of tea shops where you can just pop in and have tea. We had scones with clotted cream and tea in the tea shop at the Tower of London while sightseeing and in some museums. It was lovely to sit down and have a break!

We enjoyed tea a muriel’s Kitchen. It was very casual—blue jeans, T-shirt’s, shorts—would be fine. And the sandwiches and cakes were tasty. They also served a yummy Little smoothie. Reminded me of a hipster tea place. The atmosphere was chill but also very English. We went to the location in Kensington and there was a black taxi or red double decker bus outside our window, usually both, at all times.

Anonymous wrote:The Orangerie at Kensington Gardens.

I'm not familiar with that tea, but Kensington Gardens is a wonderful place, especially with kids. Consider adding some time before or after the tea.

I'm going to London too, and in my research came across Candella Tea Room (maybe I even heard about on DCUM?)...it looks like a good option for a simple, non fancy tea..

The Orangerie at Kensington Gardens.

Would love a recommendation for a more casual afternoon tea in London. We will be sightseeing and going to a football game in the evening so will be in jeans. Obviously we aren't planning on high tea but would like something a little more special than just stopping at a pub for afternoon refreshments. Is there a place we can go in casual dress where we can get tea, scones, sweets, etc?