Today, we sampled two styles of afternoon tea at The Sitting Room in Sheringham; the standard and a savoury alternative. We chose this venue for two reasons. The first being we had searched online for a savoury afternoon tea and the second the location - who doesn't enjoy a trip to the seaside, whatever the time of year?
Having enjoyed a lovely walk along the promenade, we arrived fifteen minutes early for our booking. The table was already sanitised and reserved so we didn't have to wait around.
We were attended to straight away and, our drinks selected and ordered, the pretty and quirkily mismatched crockery and cutlery were set around us by friendly staff. Settling in, we took in our surroundings; a rustic and quaint tearoom with traditional wooden tables overlooked by walls filled with a variety of paintings on display and for sale (most of which were out of my price range but I assume were local artists).
Each table was adorned with a posy vase containing fresh flowers and the tables were spacious and set apart well enough to more than adhere to current social distancing regulations. On this occasion another family member joined us but, for our ratings, just the four of us will critique as usual.
Our drinks were served in good time, closely followed by our afternoon teas; three savoury and two traditional.
The bottom layer was amply filled with a good selection of sandwiches, including ham and cheese, tuna, and egg mayonnaise. We were pleased with this selection as, all too often, we find strange flavours such as piccalilli or pickle are included and are very much for the selective taste. When we ordered a second drink midway through our meal, we asked if we could order a few more sandwiches as they were so enjoyable. We could probably have managed without them but we had enjoyed some sea air and were all unusually hungry.
The second layer on the savoury teaplates offered quiche, a spinach and feta cheese tart, sausage rolls. We devoured these delights, all wonderfully fresh, along with our additional sandwiches which arrived swiftly. The sausage rolls, we all agreed, were especially fresh and flavoursome.
We shared the two sweet and three savoury scones among us, with the options of jam and fresh cream or a sweet onion relish. The website does mention a choice of up to 20 different jams but we were only given strawberry, which suited us just fine. I am sure, had we asked, other flavours would have been available but we didn't feel the need to. The cheese scones were as near to perfect as could be. We were a little disappointed with the fruit scones as they appeared to be a combination of a scone and a teacake and tasted a little dry.
This left us with the petit fours selection on the standard plates. By this stage we were starting to struggle but we shared the little cakes between us and there was something to suit all tastes; we enjoyed a variety of sweet flavours ranging from coffee and chocolate to lemon, pistachio and apricot.
Overall, a thoroughly tasty and extremely filling selection of afternoon teas. A most enjoyable afternoon.
The four of us rated each of the following out of five and the average scores are shown here.
Environment (both inside and out):
4.25/5
Quality: 4.5/5
Service: 4.25 /5
Value: 4.75/5
Overallrating: 17.75/20
Would we visit again? Definitely.
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