2/03/2013

Afternoon Tea at The Lobby, The Peninsula Tokyo

We went to try Tokyo's top 4 afternoon tea at The Lobby, The Peninsula Tokyo.
The top 5 list and thr first one we tried was the link below.
http://chobiro47.blogspot.jp/2012/11/afternoon-tea-at-lobby-lounge-in-ritz.html

In the Peninsula Tokyo, there're 2 places provide afternoon tea but on the list, The Lobby was in it.
Same as the name, it's located on the first floor and in the center of the lounge, there's a space where wedding couple walk down celebrated by their guests and people at the lobby/lounge.
The light are not heavily decorated chandelier but they use fine strips with light bulb at the end so it was bright but gives soft effect.
The music is played live and when the wedding couple walk through, they play wedding music.
On weekdays, they take reservation but on weekends, unless you're staying at the hotel, you need to stand and wait, like Disney rides.

Afternoon tea starts at 2:30PM and ends at 5:00PM.
As many of my friends said on weekends it's pretty busy and the line is long, we decided to get there at least one hour before.
Then, we arrived at the hotel before 1PM.
And there's no line so we asked one of the waiter there and he doubled check with the manager where to line up and wait.
He's very nice and even provided me newspapers while waiting for 1 hour and half. 
(Never had such a nice service!)
The waiting space had sakura (cherry blossom).
And B1 floor, there's a little space and it's decorated Karesansui (dry stone garden/dry landscape rock garden).
After 30 minutes, some people started lining up after us, and around 2PM, the line went up to the stairs and some people looked upset and surprised to see such a long line.

At 2:30PM sharp, a waiter in black suit came and led us to a table.

As soon as we sat, a waitress brought us hot towel and another waitress brought us menu.
The Lobby has only one afternoon tea menu, however the tea has nice amount of selection besides you can have as much tea as you would like and change the leaves, too.
I ordered The Peninsula Tokyo Afternoon Tea for the first tea.
A waitress poured tea.
After finishing my tea, I poured by myself but I realized the tea pot was extremely hot and heavy.
But the paper cover on the handle was slippy and it was hard to pick it up.
Also the tea strainer was the heaviest one among the hotel lounges I've been to in my life.
So if you don't have much power to lift heavy things, you might wanna be careful...

The Peninsula Classic Afternoon Tea Set has come!
Sadly the handle was tilted a bit.

The bottom plate, it's selection of savories.
The middle plate, selection of scones.
The top plate, selection of sweets.

This time, I took photos of every single food so the below would be a list of food with photos.
Selection of Savories
Salmon rillettes with multigrain crouton
The riettes was pretty rich but black pepper and crispy crouton went well with all together.

Fried turkey wrap roll with cocktail sauce
I've never had fried turkey and it was like tempura.
The wrap was close to soft taco shell.

Corned beef, sauerkraut and watercress on wheat toast with mustard sauce
Other places tend to use pork or salmon for sandwich, so it's nice to have beef.
However, I tasted some sort of mayo or mustard flavor, so I only could have a bite.
The bread was soft and I could have enjoyed if I'm capable eating mayo and mustard.

Apple puree with anis, fresh cheese and sliced almond
I could taste really rich flavor of apple and sense the puree on my tongue.

Selection of Scones
Homemade organic plain and raisin scones
I think The Lobby's scones had the best and most butter flavor and scent I've eaten.
They smelled really good since the high tea set was brought to the table and till I finished eating then.

Plain
Raisin
The Peninsula original clotted cream and homemade raspberry jam
Clotted cream and raspberry jam on plain scone, and....
I made scone sandwich.

Selection of Sweets
Matcha Cake
Sweet but bitter matcha cake with sweet red beans.

Chocolate tart
This tart was so "chocolate" and thick.
Not too sweet so I didn't get sick of eating this besides it was a small piece with sour raspberry and crunchy corn flake (or rice puff).

Cheese cake
This is rare cheese cake (no-bake cheese cake) with blueberries.

Strawberry short cake
Sliced strawberries are between sponge cakes and a strawberry cut into half was place on the cake with a bar of white chocolate.

I ordered Muscat tea for the second tea.
It had sweet fruity flavor and had weaker tea flavor than the first tea I had.

<Personal Evaluation>
View: 2 out of 5

No window, close to the main gate, so every time somebody comes in and goes out, cold wind blew up and there's no window as it's at the lobby.
You can get to see some happy wedding couples but almost every hour they have guests and staffs for the wedding. So you might not get relax much if you're seated close to the isle.

Food: 4 out of 5

All the foods on the plates were sophisticated and I like the fried turkey and also the salmon rillettes.
As I'd never had any of those before.
It was pretty impressive to have fish rillettes, not pork.

Tea: 3 out of 5

To be able to try as much tea as we want is great and it's something I expected.
Also the interesting selection, like muscat, was nice to have and made me want to try it.
Just one thing I need to say is the pot is seriously heavy and the paper cover for the handle was slippy.
I wish the pot was lighter and the cover would have stayed better without falling off.

Service: 3.5 out of 5

When we got there really early, a waiter managed to get us to the place where we needed to line up.
Not only that, he came back to us for a little bit later to ask if I wanted to have something to read and listed up some selections to choose and brought me newspaper shortly.
Not like others, I felt waiters and waitress were "checking" customers well but not like disturbing, so that we didn't have hard time to call one of them to order something.

3,800 JPY (tax included) x 10% of service charge = 4,180 JPY

The Lobby
1F, The Peninsula Tokyo
1-8-1 Yurakucho, 
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

Open: 6:30AM - 11:00PM (Fridays and Saturdays open till 0:00AM)
*Afternoon tea: 2:30PM - 5:00 PM

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