So as I mentioned when I introduced you to them Zomato very kindly sent me a £40 voucher to visit The Parlour at Fortnum & Mason. You might not know – I didn’t – that Fortnum & Mason houses not one, not two but three different restaurants. (Four if you count their wine bar located in the food hall.)

The Parlour is the most relaxed based around an old school ice cream parlour and while they specialise in sundaes they also offer a range of savouries and cakes. The decor is cute and girlie and would be a great place for a birthday party.

We decided to take a twist on our usual monthly afternoon tea date and go for The Pick of the Parlour. For £19.50 you get a Spinach & Gruyère Tart, two scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam a mini parlour ice-cream sundae and a pot of tea.

I’ll be honest when our platter arrived I wasn’t sure if it would be enough to fill me up for the evening as we’d both skipped dinner. The tart was, unexpectedly, cold but absolutely fantastic. The buttery pastry simply melted in your mouth and there was just the right amount of cheese to give the tart flavour without being overpowering.

I was very happy that the pot of tea I was given was a decent size and I got three full cups of wonderfully light earl grey out of the one deceptively small pot.

The scones were my absolute favourite and I think the best scones I’ve had of all the ones I’ve tried. I loved the fact that we each had individual dishes of cream and jam rather than having to share and worrying about being a clotted cream hog. Haha. We were even offered more but we declined.

We were curious to see what the mini parlour sundae consisted of as it wasn’t listed on the menu. I wondered if perhaps it was a smaller version of one of the full size ones that they offer but what we were presented with was this:

How cute is it? A small chocolate waffle cone with a scoop of strawberry ice cream topped with whipped cream, chopped almonds and sprinkles with a little touch of raspberry coulis as well.

The ice cream was really nice and while you could see it was made from real strawberries there were no nasty big chunks in there spoiling your fun. Most of it went really well together although I wasn’t a fan of the coulis and found it a bit too zingy for me. We found ourselves satisfyingly full once we were done rather than overstuffed which was nice as so often after an afternoon tea outing.

We couldn’t fault the service at The Parlour. Our reservation has been for 7:15pm and even though we were early and they were no longer accepting walk-ins we were seated straight away. I’ve never really thought about Fortnum & Mason as a place to go for a dining delight but we’re already trying to synchronise diaries to find a suitable day when we can return for afternoon tea at the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon!

*I was a guest at The Parlour courtesy of Zomato.
All opinions are my own & have not been influenced by this in any way.