Gimme Some of That Suite Tea: Vegan Afternoon Tea at La Suite West Hotel

February 11, 2019

Magic is happening every day in London, people! As you know, the vegan scene in general is off the chizzy, and with that has come a storm of vegan afternoon teas. Okay storm is probably the wrong word to use to describe something so damn posh and genteel but man, every decent place worth their salt seems to be advertising their ability to do a vegan menu, like we saw recently with The Ritz Hotel. But nothing beats being able to go for afternoon tea and not waste precious brainpower worrying about their ability to accommodate you, to just relax and trust that they will be able to blow your minds with their vegan food because they are a fully vegan business. Fortunately, you can do just that at La Suite West, London’s first entirely vegan hotel, and their on-site restaurant Cafe Forty One.

I recently got to enjoy a lovely afternoon tea at Cafe Forty One with husbo along with friends Jojo and Nick from Ethical Vegan Life. For all of February, guests for tea will enjoy a special Valentine’s Day menu, which is served daily from 12pm to 5pm. Fancy tea seemed like the perfect lazy Sunday activity so off we went, expectations high and tumnuses rumbling.

I love a clean hotelWe booked our tea for right at noon, when they open the restaurant, so we had to wait five minutes or so while they finished setting up. It wasn’t a big deal though, since it’s a nice hotel and they have a bottle of water and glasses on the reception desk. Every hotel should do that! When they led us in, the restaurant, small and beautifully decorated (I’m so into the rose and copper palate), looked chic but welcoming.

They welcomed us with glasses of ‘non-alcoholic fizz’, literally that’s what it says on the menu, no more detail, which I found funny, but it was basically like ginger ale, maybe with a touch of elderflower (they do love elderflower in the UK). They also had a carafe of water at the ready which, as you know, I fully appreciate (and you can see that it was almost empty by the time I took my first picture!). Unlike my last afternoon tea experience where the waiters seemed a tad confused that I wanted water and not just tea (but you have tea! that’s hot dark water!), they were great about bringing us more water throughout the afternoon.

Honestly, I’d be happy to forgo the ‘tea’ part of afternoon tea – we’re there for the food, right? I ordered a pot of chamomile because it’s the most benign of teas. I loved the little glass teapot almost as much as I loved the rose gold candle holder with its planet rings (I thought they should be spinning but I realize that is probably scientifically impossible just yet; also it’s best if you keep my hands from getting into the candle wax at fancy places (also I happily went a day without burning my fingies)). The afternoon tea menu comes with ‘bottomless’ tea and coffee, good water service, and that welcome fizz so I was really happy to have so many different liquids at the ready! I love liquids!

But you don’t care about the liquids; you’re here to see the food. They brought our beautiful tiers of food glorious food out promptly – the bottom layer of sandwiches, the middle patisserie layer from their acclaimed pastry chef, and the top layer for the scones, which every tea requires.

I’m always most excited about the sandwiches, because Joey was right and sandwiches are the best. What’s your favorite food? Sandwiches. I always anticipate what would happen if I asked for more sandwiches (MOAR SANDWICH) at these things, because I assume I’ll want an endless supply, and more than that I assume I will be able to eat more than one round, which is a lot of assuming, and you know what happens when you assume. After you have your first pot of tea and your first two liters of water and your mocktail, it’s pretty clear you’re gonna be full real fast, and ho boy, I was hurt before I even made it to the scones.

FYI, each tiered serving tray is for two people; those are not all my sandwiches. We had:

chipotle cheese with caramelized onion chutney and rocket on rye bread
brioche roll with cream cheese and smoked carrot salmon
BLT with aubergine bacon and garlic mayo on sourdough
Mediterranean hummus and cucumber on farmhouse loaf

Three of the four sandwiches were wonderful. My favorite was the BLT, which is no surprise to me. I loved that the bread was kind of oily (not mushy or soggy, just like (bear with me) moist), and I loved the filling. It was a nice, delicate take on the BLT for an afternoon tea setting. My second favorite was the chipotle cheese one (the darker seeded bread). The cheese they made was killer and it was so smart to have it on the sturdier bread. The flavors were amazing. The cream cheese and smoked carrot salmon was also great, as was the brioche roll, and it’s amazing to get to try legit vegan brioche. However, the ratio of the bread to the filling was way too off. Each component was wonderful, but every bit was mostly bread, since it’s so big and fluffy, and the filling was easily lost. MOAR FILLING PLZ. Or use the brioche for something stronger.

The one bad sandwich was the only low point of the entire experience: the hummus on white bread. They tried to fancy it up on the menu calling it “Mediterranean” hummus on “farmhouse loaf” but it was bland af paste with cucumber on white bread. Not a fan. In fact, we had an extra and no one ate it. I’m surprised at the lack of taste, really the lack of anything interesting going on with this sandwich since everything else was so wonderful.

By this time, I was hella full and awash with tea, but I powered through to the scones. They were GREAT. Buttery and a good solid texture without being too hard, the scones were quite impressive. Happily, Cafe Forty One sends out the best accompaniments with their scones: homemade berry compote, and also coconut cream (they call it clotted cream but it is plain old coconut cream (that kind of loses its form the longer it sits on your table but that’s to be expected, it’s coconut cream)), and vegan honey! Or, to be precise, Vegan Honea, the product on sale in the UK. I thought this honey was super convincing. The texture was right on and the taste was pretty accurate in my opinion.

I think a berry concoction that is more jam and less compote would be better here, because it was a bit too loose for scone placement, but it was still good. In an unexpected turn of events, I actually though the raisin scone was better than the plain one! I usually hate raisins in things – they look like chocolate chips and then they REALLY AREN’T – but here they were great. I believe scones may be the one food where raisins are now permitted. Excellent stuff.

I was fin’ to bust at this point but that pastry tier looked beyond incredible so I had to try at least the items that wouldn’t keep if I had to take anything to go.

I mean wowFor the patisserie offerings, we had:

Black forest entremets, Griotte dark chocolate and vanilla Chantilly (I don’t know what half these words mean)
Pistachio and milk chocolate brioche
Pecan and almond cookie
Red currant macaron
Shortbread with chocolate cube and caramel creme (and goooold)

My favorite without a doubt was that sweet brioche. It was NOT pistachio flavored – none of us could sense any pistachio in it, although that cream was green – and there was barely any chocolate either (you can see the very light decoration), but if you ignore the name of it, it was perfection. It’s an absolutely delicious moist (sorry again) little brioche cake with its roof cut off and reattached with a light barely sweet cream, and then the base of it was filled with a vanilla custard and just wow, I could eat 100 of them. I want it as a giant cake. If La Suite West is reading this, can I have it as a giant cake?

I also adored the black forest creation, the dark berry-chocolate custardy mound on top of a perfect, bitter chocolate cake base. It was hard to lift this one off the tray – they should put a tiny paper under it – but man it was remarkable. Entremets apparently means delicious gooey stuff. Okay I looked it up and all I could find is that entremets means multi-layered mousse based cake, which this kiiinda is, I guess, or it just means ‘between courses’ which no.

I really loved the shortbread cookie too, but especially the chocolate cube and the caramel custard and little white cream on top. These three components were applied with a sewing needle, I imagine – so so tiny!!! Not that I could have eaten more, but I would have loved more of that custard and cream and chocolate.

I was v. v. hurt at this point so we packed up the red currant macaron (one ‘o’ on the French sandwich jawn, two for the coconut thing popular at Passover) and the shortbreak cookies with my leftover scones (I couldn’t finish them either) and ate them the next day and they were still great. They’re not as impressive as the more complex French patisserie, since I mean I make amazing cookies and there’s only so amazing a cookie can be (there’s a threshold I think like with falafel) and macarons are the most overrated food in existence (so much work! so little payoff!) but it was nice to have a macaron and a good solid cookie and everything was beautiful.

Overall, this was an excellent experience and I highly recommend Cafe Forty One for a lovely vegan afternoon tea. It costs £35 per person, so still perfect for a special occasion but less expensive than most of the offerings in central London. I can’t wait to go back to try the rest of their regular menu; it sounded amazing and from what I could gather from the other tables who weren’t doing the tea, it looked amazing too. I also want to try more of their desserts (*cough* and please give me a whole cake-sized version of that brioche *cough*). It’s unbelievable how advanced vegan patisserie has become. HOW LUCKY WE ARE TO BE ALIVE RIGHT NOW.
Cafe Forty One at La Suite West, London, England
Water speed: They brought carafes allll the time. Highest marks!
Service: All the waitstaff was very nice. There was an issue when my friend’s specific allergen-free sandwiches weren’t sent out with the rest of ours, and it took a while for them to send out the right plate. That’s more a kitchen mishap than a service issue, but considering all the prep we had done to make sure they knew about the allergy, it’s surprising that it wasn’t all set.
Bathrooms: As you’d expect from a nice hotel! They were very dark but nice. The gender symbols on the doors are the forking TINIEST I’ve ever seen I’m obsessed.
Food: INCROYABLE!
Bonus: A decently priced afternoon tea with extraordinarily high calibre French pastries??? FIRE THAT SUCKER UP AND THROW IT AT MY FACE.