Before Christmas Jon and I were invited to Bettys tea room for a Champagne Bettys afternoon tea as a chance to try out and share with you the new vegetarian menu Bettys have to offer. We chose the Bettys tea room in York and made it a day out to celebrate Jon’s birthday.
As you can see York was pretty flooded when we arrived!
Dotted around York were lots of different ice carvings for different sections of the city, the National Railway Museum, the York Dungeons and outside our Bettys tea room a well for water aid and the beginnings of a reindeer.
The heavens opened just as we went in so I was absolutely soaked through, a great start. I had never been for an afternoon tea at Bettys but the service was outstanding. We started with a glass of Champagne and the menu to read through, as well as the big decision… what tea to choose!
Our appitisers arrived, Jon’s a mini prawn cocktail and mine a really delicious layering of tomato, onion and guacamole.
Our starters arrived and as with the appetisers the vegetarian option looked very similar and was in no way boring with lots of flavours and variety.
These are the first teas we chose, the Ceylon Blue Sapphire and Yu Luo White Tea.
Our Bettys afternoon tea arrived and was pretty spectacular, it was very hard to photograph everything first before diving in.
Above was Jon’s sandwich selection, chicken, egg and ham. Below is mine which I think looks even better, cream cheese and cucumber, goats cheese and caramelized onion and the same egg sandwich as Jon.
After a little break of tea we moved onto desserts, starting with the minature scones. The scones were flavoured one of lavendar and the other with sultanas. Scones are my favourite thing and a lavendar scone is something I will definitely look into making over the summer to impress my friends.
The rest of the puddings we shared and split in half so that we could try some of everything. Our favourite was definitely the raspberry and deep chocolate square that was so rich and delicious and not what you expected from its initial apprearance.
To finish off we had a pot of tea and through a recommendation from one of the staff chose the Christmas tea, a warming, citrus spice delight. As a parting gift we also received two small tins of Bettys leaf tea.
Bettys tea room felt so special because of all the little touches, a pianist playing christmas tunes, a beautifully kept space and such hard working staff members who were so pleasant. The vegetarian selection was superb, it was very similar in size and style to the original menu and didn’t stick with classic, boring options that vegetarians can often suffer with when eating out.
When leaving the ice sculptor had nearly finished his reindeer carving which looked amazing.
And lastly, macaroons…
This looks so amazing. I’m staring at all these photographs on my screen and I’m getting jealous of you!
La Belle Dame
This is making me hungry, I’ve been there a couple of time and I’d love to re-visit!