pink afternoon tea at grand hôtel stockholm

This afternoon we spent a delightful few hours at Grand Hôtel enjoying luxuary afternoon tea - or in my case pink afternoon tea since I had pink champagne - the occasion being my "mother-in-law" turning a very respectable even number of age.

Delightful as it was, even from a vegetarian point of view, I must say that that top quality and ingenuity I experienced 4 years ago the first time I was there - which I apparently never blogged about... - is not quite there anymore. I do believe one pays more for the milieu and ambiance than the quality of the food experience, sadly.

I have had afternoon tea there a few times since and it's been lovely, but to be honest the afternoon tea at Sigtuna Stadshotell is at least as good. And better value for money. I will actually change my rating to a 4 from a superior 5 on Yelp.

My favourite part of the afternoon tea was definitely the scones and the hazelnut ones in particular. Their forte is most certainly the scones and spreads, they're not as good with the pastry which I find to be either dry or overly sweet in general. However I loved the little miniature chocolate cupcake with truffle that I got instead of the animal gelatine filled pastry.

Which also, once again, is such an unmodern way of making pastry, using animal gelatine instead of perfectly fine plantbased ones. Yes, you can order a vegetarian afternoon tea, but unfortunately they don't seem to do a vegan one. And really, gelatine in the lemon cured?! Seriously.

The pink champagne didn't really add anything to the afternoon tea experience, but then again I'm rarely interested or delighted by alcohol, but now I've at least tried it once. And it was pink.

All that said, despite the above mentioned details and the slightly dry sandwiches, the lack of different spreads for the scones - of course you can get a refill, but I must say that it's quite bizarre that you get the same amount of jams, creams and curds whether you're a party of two or six... - the attentiveness from the service when it came to serving the tea and refilling the water glasses etc, it was a sweet afternoon. With a beautiful castle view over a, now again, snow covered Stockholm.