Holiday Tea #1 - Abkhazi Garden

This past holiday season I went for a total of THREE Christmas-themed afternoon teas. The first of these was with my friend Ina at the Abkhazi Garden, in the Rockland area of Victoria. There's a very interesting story behind the Abkhazi Garden, featuring a prince(!), which you can read about here. I've been here once before for the afternoon tea and it was lovely, but this Christmas tea was a little "extra" than the regular tea.

Note: "afternoon tea" and "high tea" are NOT the same thing. "Afternoon tea" is the fancy tea we think about the Queen sitting down to, with little cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, delicate shortbread, cakes and other sweets. "High tea", on the other hand, is/was a working class meal served at the end of the work day, basically a working class family meal (what I would refer to as 'dinner' or 'supper' here in Canada). When I go out for "tea" I am going out for the fancy genteel "afternoon tea" a la Downton Abbey.

For me, presentation is everything. Ina and I were seated at a table for two in the front window, which allowed us to look out over the garden below. The tables for tea are laid out in what used to be the living room of the house, complete with bay window, fireplace, and lots of natural light.

Crisp white tablecloth and bone china

 What I love about afternoon tea is getting a menu of what I'll be eating. I can't possibly remember all the wonderful things that the server tells me, so having a menu handy is good for reference.

Look at that menu!

We started with the hot honey-buttered crumpets with housemade lemon marmalade...yummy! I love crumpets, and I love anything lemon, so this was a delight. I would have been happy with just a plate of those crumpets!

Ina and I each chose different teas (Silk Road), but for the life of me I can't remember now what they were (my guess is that we both chose black teas, Earl Grey for one of us). Then our server came out with the 3-tiered tea tray and we were blown away...

I like to start with the savouries, always found on the bottom tier. On this plate we had:

• petite tourtiere
• roasted turkey and cranberry croissant
• cucumber and cream cheese on whole wheat
• free range organic egg salad on rye (I let Ina have mine because I hate egg salad)
• smoked salmon profiterole with caramelized shallot cream and dill

This plate was so, so good! If I had to choose a favourite, it would be the tourtiere, followed closely by the smoked salmon profiterole.

The middle tier was next, the scone tier (quite possibly my favourite tier), and on this plate we had:

• freshly baked currant & cranberry scones with Devonshire cream and housemade preserves
• freshly baked cheddar scones with crisp apple slice

Now...I love scones no matter what, but when you have Devonshire cream to put on them...they blow everything else out of the water (not that I put it on my cheese scone, though, that would just be weird). There really is nothing better than a good cup of tea, a scone warm from the oven, and some Devonshire cream and strawberry preserves. Heavenly!

And finally for the top tier...the TREATS!

Eat your heart out, this was AMAZING!!

Now...Ina and I were careful to pace ourselves throughout the savouries and scones so that we would have room for all of THIS loveliness:

• mincemeat tarts
• dark brandied Christmas cake
• Granny's butter shortbread
• sugarplums
• Melchior's chocolate treasure

Let's break this down...mincemeat tarts? Love them! One of my favourite things to eat at Christmas, and this one was great. Dark brandied Christmas cake? I love Christmas cake, but this one was SO boozy I actually coughed/spluttered on my first bite because all I could taste was the brandy. I wasn't sure if I would finish it, but I did. Granny's butter shortbread? I loooooove shortbread, and this was delicious. Sugarplums? I had never had a sugarplum in my life before I tried this one, so I didn't know what to expect. It wasn't that much to my liking, so I had one bite and left the rest of it on my plate. Melchior's chocolate treasure? Yes, that is 24k gold leaf on the chocolate!!!! Let's have a closer look:

It was DIVINE!!!!! So chocolatey, so smooth, I loved it!!!! If I could eat that every day, I'd be about 800 pounds, but I would also be so happy!

This was a GREAT afternoon tea, and I highly recommend going to Abkhazi Garden to try it out. Keep an eye on their website to see when their special/holiday afternoon teas are coming up, and also go for a regular tea, you won't be disappointed!