Fortnum & Mason is a high end team shop located in central London. Although the exterior of the building is quite old, it has a very well decorated interior with a lot of glimmering items. The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon at the top floor of Fortnum & Mason is also a high class English afternoon tea restaurant that offers high end tea selection and afternoon tea foot selections.
We have made reservation at Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon months before the actual date. The week before the actual date, Fortnum & Mason actually emailed me for confirmation to ensure that we were coming. We got to Fortnum & Mason a bit earlier than our reservation time, and thus we went to other floors and looked around.
The lower floor seemed like a market selling meat and vegetables. We were a bit confused and the meat there was selling at a very high price. We did see few people shopping there as well.
The main floor was where all the high end tea and desserts were at. There was also a lot of gift items that were wrapped very nicely. There was a gift set that simply looked like a castle with individual items placed in each room of the castle. It was very cool and fancy.
The grand stairwell heading upstairs with chandelier at the center was very cool. Everything was just so shining. The second floor was lady's floor. Many high end fashion clothing was sold here. Fortnum & Mason also had its own brand of hand bags even though we had never seen it sold anywhere else. There was also a large suit case that could be used for picnic. All the tea cups and sandwiches can fit in the suit case. Then There was also a row of perfumes place in these fancy glass jars with fancy golden knobs to open it.
Then on the third floor, of course it was the gentlemen's floor. This floor had least amount of people, which was expected. Other than just selling shirts, suits, and shirts, there was also shaving cream and old school razors. At the corner of the floor, there was also a barber shop. Then along the wall, there was a shoe wax section. The guy there seemed so bored and had to keep staring at the wall.Then finally it was our time for our afternoon tea. We headed up stairs to Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon to check in and got our table by the wall. The theme was light mint green and very fancy. However, we waited for 10 minutes before anyone showed up to ask what we wanted to order. This was not what we expected at such fancy place.
There were few afternoon tea selections. We chose the classic afternoon tea menu and savory afternoon tea menu. Each was 55 pounds per person. We also selected a peach tea and a green tea.
The tea and the food was delivered to us very quickly. There were dessert on the top plates and sandwiches at the bottom. Other than that, there were different jams on the other plates.
The classic afternoon tea food was more like dessert and sweet. There were cakes, scones, and sandwiches. The savory afternoon tea food was more salty with smoke salmon, salty scones, and other savory items. We think that the classic afternoon tea menu had much better items.
As we finished our plate of food and finished all the tea in the pot, we were sitting there to see if anyone would come by and ask for refill. Unfortunately it did not happen for 15 minutes. It was very disappointing. It just seemed that the waiters and waitresses at Fortnum & Mason simply did not care about its customers. We had to waive our arms at them very hard in order to get their attention. Then when we wanted to get our bill, we were not offered to have the cake either. The worst thing would be that Fortnum & Mason dared to add 12.5% of tips on top of the bill when the waiters and waitresses were so bad and did not need to work for the tips.
Overall, Fortnum & Mason is a very fancy place to be, but its service is just so bad. It really needs to train its staff to provide better service to its customers, or simply don't add 12.5% tips on top of the bill. We don't recommend this place for afternoon tea. Especially if you want to dress up for afternoon tea, Ritz seems to be a much better place to go to.
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