Afternoon tea trend is booming in Dubai, a mini meal composed typically of finger sandwiches, pastries, mini cakes, scones and jam along with coffee and tea. A tea ritual started in Britain to stem the hunger for the dinner later in the evening. Afternoon tea is also about elegance and there is no better place to experience elegance than at The Palace Downtown Dubai. Unlimited tea infusions and afternoon tea delights makes this luxurious afternoon at The Palace Downtown Dubai an interesting proposition.

Afternoon tea happens at Al Bayt in the Palace Downtown Dubai which actually hosts a dozen of other afternoon tea packages and for March they had a special called BVLGARI Afternoon Tea. BVLGARI afternoon tea at Lakeside Garden is between 01:00pm to 04:00pm. You would be sitting in the private gardens of the Palace Downtown with wonderful views of the world’s tallest building and other sky scrapers around Downtown.

For BVLGARI afternoon tea, Al Bayt afternoon tea is paired with the luxury perfume manufacturer BVLGARI and as expected you get to experience many of their signature perfumes at their stands as well as samples given away to entice your senses. Besides the perfumes there wasn’t any special afternoon tea menu dedicated to BVLGARI.

Once seated comes the welcome drink which was mint and lemon. A long menu of hot and cold TWG tea was placed next to us to order. Moments later came their 3 tier afternoon tea. Ofcourse it is very exciting and for a minute we were just busy taking pictures. The beautiful gold stand really makes a statement and perfectly fits in the profile of The Palace Downtown. The cutlery were all gold plated. You really feel that are you being hosted in a Palace.

TIER TWO

• Lemon meringue tart
• New York cheese cake
• Berry and cream Choux
• Opera coffee cake
• Strawberry Tart

TIER THREE

• Green Tea scones
• Plain scones
• Petit Fours

TIER ONE

• Prawn cocktail
• Coronation chicken on tomato bread
• Roasted ribeye beef
• Cucumber gazpacho
• Avocado and creamy tuna roll

Some of my favourites would be the Coronation chicken on tomato bread, lemon meringue tart, the smoked salmon sandwich.  The smoked salmon sandwich and the giant macaroon came in a separate tray and definitely made a statement. We loved the salmon sandwich but the macaroon which came with stuffed strawberry filling was ok, It wasn’t up to it’s good looks. I would have preferred it to be filled with some of the finest chocolate ganache. I also thought the scones could be better.

The chocolate fondant was a surprise, didn’t see that coming along with the fruit skewers nor was it mentioned in the menu. This plate gave it a fun ending to our afternoon tea. These were some of the extra perks in the BVLGARI afternoon tea package along with UNLIMITED tea infusions.

We had unlimited selection of tea and the best part, it was TWG tea. The brand that knows all about serving authentic tea. The coffee is made by their local barista. The only coffee we tried was the latte and it was a pretty good tasting coffee as you can see above. Hot or Cold you need take advantage of their unlimited tea infusions offering and get to know different flavours of tea from around the world!

Tomorrow would be last day for your opportunity to try the BVLGARI afternoon tea but otherwise they would still have other versions of afternoon tea happening at The Palace Downtown. Also I would like to highlight the afternoon tea is a busy hour at Al Bayt, The Palace Downtown Dubai. They seemed to be short of staff. There was lot of waiting, we often had to wait for our orders or even found it difficult to catch any server’s attention. I thought it was better off going for the buffet option(available  as an option for one of their afternoon tea packages). Click here to know more about afternoon tea offering at Palace Downtown Dubai. Click below to see the pictures in full screen menu.