#afternoon-tea-treats

#afternoon-tea-treats

The Madison Hotel's restaurant, Rods Steak and Seafood Grille, features authentic train parlor cars, providing a unique dining experience that transports guests back in time.

A Chinese silver-gilt tea service once leapt from a €50,000 estimate to more than €200,000 when auctioned by Sotheby's Amsterdam in 2011.

This family favorite is as simple as it's iconic - sponge cake rolled over vanilla ice cream, with a layer of raspberry jam between the two. Think Swiss roll, but from the frozen aisle. The dessert became so popular that more than 25 miles of Arctic Roll were sold per month during the 1980s.

The afternoon starts with a tour of the Old Bailey, including the courtrooms, the judges' dining room, and the cells below. If you've booked the afternoon tea, you're taken back up to the richly decorated Great Hall for an afternoon tea surrounded by all the pomp and grandeur that the hall can deliver.

Fish and chips is about as iconic as you can get for pub fare. It's a perfect harmony of tender, subtly sweet and briny cod with a crisp, buttery coating; plus, salty, starchy fries. The only thing a classic fish and chips meal is missing is a good beer. After all, it's a standard order in pubs, where many guests are already enjoying pints - and that's not to mention that many chefs actually batter the fish in beer.

The Peers' Dining Rooms will offer a seasonal set menu at £70 per person, with additional charges for drinks and a 12.5% service charge.

Princess Diana's favourite was rose pouchong, the black tea with the rose petals, however, she was more of a coffee drinker. If she wanted a coffee, she preferred instant.

On the site of Launceston Place restaurant, at one time Michelin-starred and a favourite of Princess Diana, Sartoria has much to live up to. I popped into the launch event, a lively party with free-flowing fizz and an enthusiastic mixture of local residents and fans of Evolv, Sartoria's parent company, and was impressed by the well-thought-out concept, which I suspect is intended to appeal to a sophisticated, international neighbourhood rather than to visitors.

A tipoff to try the Tin Roof Cafe in Maldon came with prior warning: I wouldn't get a table easily as this all-day spot serving brunch, lunches and sweet stuff from the in-house bakery is constant, scone-fuelled bedlam. Red brick walls, greenery throughout, alfresco spaces, allotments growing fresh veg and herbs. Capacious, family-run, dog-welcoming, pocket-friendly. There's bubble and squeak with hand-cut ham, Korean-style chicken burgers and a vegan burger called, rather brilliantly, Peter Egan.

There is an art to a proper meat pie, according to the Seattle chef and butcher Kevin Smith. The American pot pie frustrates him because it lets the pot do the heavy lifting. "The real way of doing it, for me, is to make a freestanding pie," Smith says. The pastry should hold itself up, a technique cooks in England have honed over centuries. "That is so much more theatrical."

London's bakery scene has got to be one of the best in the world right now. As well as an abundance of croissants and sourdough, there are bakeries doing everything from Italian maritozzi to Japanese milk bread and pretty much everything in between. The weekend pastry run has become a ritual (bonus points if you literally run to the bakery) and bagging goods from Toad or Chatsworth Bakehouse before they sell out is a social flex.

The best restaurants in South Kensington are no secret to the most cultured among us. This corner of London is more synonymous with groundbreaking exhibitions than a buzzy food scene - but hey, who can compete with the V&A, Natural History Museum and Science Museum as neighbours? Alas, culture vultures require sustenance like everyone else, and there are plenty of exceptional places in these parts ready to tend to those post-gallery rumbles.