OXO Tower Restaurant

Barge House Street

London

SE1 9PH

Afternoon Tea: £35.00pp*

OXO Tower Restaurant, Bar & Brasserie – OXO Tower London (harveynichols.com)

Greetings, folks. It’s time to start spending money again. As this is the first afternoon tea taken since February 2020 – a carefree time when you didn’t have to evacuate a building whenever someone sneezed – I’ve chosen to visit the OXO Tower Restaurant, hoping to ease back onto the high-octane world of eating small things and pretending they constitute a meal

Actually, that’s a lie. I didn’t choose the OXO Tower. I decided to be impulsive on Saturday and book a tea for the following Sunday, only to find that my first 24 choices were either temporarily closed, had ceased trading during the unpleasantness or had forgotten how to put a tea bag in hot water. In a post-apocalyptic world spontaneity takes a lot of planning

Location – Southbank. The Globe. The Tate Modern. The ITV studios where Eamonn Holmes can occasionally be spotted hosting an outside broadcast of This Morning concerning which tent you should buy with Joe Swash testing porta‑potties (for my international readers who are unfamiliar with This Morning… lucky you)

Dark tourism fact for my fellow weirdo’s – Avoid the London Dungeon (pants) and The Clink Prison Museum (big baggy pants with knobs on) and pay a visit to the Crossbones Gardens at Union Street (https://crossbones.org.uk/). It was the final resting place for many of the area’s paupers and medieval sex workers known as the ‘Winchester Geese’, licensed by the Bishop of Winchester no less to ply their trade outside the boundaries of the City of London. Feel free to leave a ribbon on the gates to show your solidarity to London’s forgotten citizens

 Building – The site of a former power station brought and extended by the famous gravy magnets in the late 1920’s. OXO – overly-salty beef cubes sold in packaging more iconic than the product itself – can still be purchased from shops if Bisto is unavailable

Atmosphere – It’s modern. It’s cool. It has a nice view of the Thames (ignore the cranes as best you can. Cranes and scaffolding are ubiquitous to the London landscape. As the old joke goes, it’ll look beautiful when it’s finished). I think it has that pure moods soundtrack that is so innocuous that you’re never sure afterwards whether it was playing or not. I don’t remember. I was pretending not to listen to the couple on the next table who were on a very awkward second/third date. She accused him of not calling enough; he mentioned his ex-wife five times; she talked about how unlucky the number 63 was to her; he said that he found vulnerability in women attractive (I tried not to spit tea back into my cup upon hearing that); they parted having spent 18 minutes arguing about how they were going to split the bill. What does this have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing. It isn’t like they are the in-house entertainment you’ll encounter should you book a table (I doubt anyone will ever encounter them together again outside of a therapy session). I just find situations like this hilarious when they aren’t happening to me

Service – They like to say ‘no’, ‘regretfully’ and ‘that will not be possible’ a lot in their email correspondence. They also like to tell you to call back on the day of your booking if you have a question because they are just too darn busy to assist you at the moment. They also have a dedicated team to send you slightly narked responses to enquiries at 23:52 at night, a time when all self-respecting hermits are fast asleep and it is too late to fire back an equally terse reply. They will also tell you that two people MUST order the afternoon tea, even if the person you’re going with just wants to quietly get pissed with you in the corner and doesn’t want cakes absorbing the alcohol that should be going to their head. They will also make it clear that failure to comply with this is very suspicious, and that if they were to let you in you are definitely the type who’d share a tea meant for one with the non-compliant wastrel you’re with, and then where would the madness end? Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

In the end my guest opted out (‘I can’t be arsed with this. I’ll see you down the pub after. You can buy me a bag of nuts’) and I opted to keep the booking in order to avoid a cancellation fee of £25. Still, I’ve never kept a reservation out of spite before, so that was a new experience

The restaurant staff themselves are pleasant and helpful, dutifully explaining the concept of the teapot in that way servers have of treating everyone like aliens who will be encountering pastries and cakes and spoons for the first time since leaving the mothership. People want to feel coddled when they treat themselves. I get it. You’re paying for more than just food and a decent view. I personally find it cloying. I know what jam is. Please don’t point it out as though I’m likely to get confused between that and a pepper grinder. By that logic I will need you to explain what a napkin is in case I decide to blow my nose on the tablecloth. Be nice. Be efficient. Don’t come within a hairs breadth of asking if I need to be winded

Presentation: Very clean. Very classy. There is a good balance between savouries and sweets and a visual symmetry that is pleasing to the eye. All very nice and professional

Savouries – Perfectly crafted with high quality ingredients. Who doesn’t love a canape? Proper sized food shrunk down for three times the price? Sign me up!

Pork rillette: Cold sausage meat whisked into a mousse with peppercorns. Tastes far nicer than it sounds

Shallot and mustard croissant: A charming pastry with subtle flavours

Confit lamb sausage roll: I have had a phobia of sausage rolls since a comedian once likened the inside of a Greggs one to Wayne Rooney’s face (it’s not an insult. It’s observation). The lamb is nice and the quince aioli (I don’t know what aioli is so let’s call it sauce) gives it a pleasant zing

Sandwiches – Freshly made, plentiful and no skimping on the fillings

Golden Beetroot with date molasses: Yep, that was a thing. I disagree with beetroot on principle so I’ve nothing further to add (watch out, Giles Coren! With searing insights like that The Times are sure to snap me up as your replacement)

Cheese with chutney: A substitution for egg mayonnaise. I’d pay extra to have neither

Cucumber: As decent as any cucumber can be, i.e. you never crave it but for afternoon tea purposes you will pretend to find it satisfying. You will also pretend that you are eating one sitting on a lawn before partaking in a round of croquet

Smoked salmon with seaweed tartar: Nope, I don’t know what seaweed tartar is either, and I’ve eaten it. Good amount of salmon though

Smoked duck and whipped brie with cornichons: Delicious (I’m definitely coming for you, Coren!)

Beef rump with truffle cheese and horseradish: A miniature Sunday lunch. The stand-out of the meal

Scones – Oh, how I long for the day when I will read a menu and it will consist of crumpets or pikelets or teacakes oozing butter and currants and marmalade. Scones are to this blog what Poirot was to Agatha Christie: an annoyance too popular to avoid but providing little pleasure to the writer trying to think of new ideas for something they don’t really care for. However, these were fine as far a plain, warmish scones can be. Not too dense. The knife didn’t rebound when I tried to cut through them the way certain cricket balls masquerading as pastries sometimes do. They were served with two plentiful jars of jam (one to have with the tea, one to be taken home and thrown away three months later when I remember I don’t eat jam in real life) and a large dish of clotted cream. I recommend using your fingers to scope creamy globs of it directly into your mouth, an idea that looks a trifle suggestive when written down, now I think about it. Oh well, it might get the post to the top of the search engine at any rate

Desserts -Three simple sweet treats. Small but satisfying

Blueberry cake with candied almonds: a delightful nutty mini muffin

Elderflower panna cotta with champagne jelly and strawberry gel: Light summery flavours. I mostly remember the jelly. If more alcohol was served in chewy cubes I’d be pissed on a permanent basis

Cherry and blackberry macaroon: Tart and delicious

Tea – With no limit to the number of pots you can order I would advise going mad and sampling as much as you can (maybe don’t fill up a flask. Though actually… no, don’t do that. People will stare). I picked four pots at random and they were all lovely, from the classic English Breakfast through to peppermint, ginger chocolate (chocolate tea is the promise that is only ever vaguely fulfilled, more through the smell than the taste) to a rather lovely ‘Warm Hug’ blend of fruit and botanicals. Knock yourself out, but be warned: there is only so much tea of wildly differing flavours sloshing around that the human body can stand, and it will only alert you that you have overdone it once you have stepped outside and have surrendered access to a clean toilet, so pace yourself and make full use of the two hour time slot

Service: 2.5/5

Surroundings: 3.5/5

Savory selection: 4.5/5

Scones: 4.5/5

Dessert selection: 4/5

Verdict: Despite the shaky start with the reservation this was sleek, well presented and passed the taste/quality test. 4/5 teacups

*Prices/information correct as of 27/6/21

Feel free to share stories, views and tips in the comments section below. Always fun to hear from fellow teaholics xx