Café Majlis

We try the afternoon tea at the Emirates Palace café Discuss this article

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Can you find a good, traditional English tea in the desert? Afternoon tea is all about the occasion, so surely the most expensive hotel in the city is a good place to start.

The difference between ‘high’ and ‘afternoon’ tea is the kind of etiquette dilemma that went out with the corsette and electro-shock therapy. But here’s what you need to know: high tea is traditionally an evening dinner, and afternoon, or low tea (so-named because it is usually served in lounges at especially low coffee tables), is more of a late-afternoon filler.

It is a worldwide misnomer to conflate the two; simply a case of customs getting lost in translation and hardly worth a public flogging. So, when Emirates Palace call afternoon tea ‘high tea’, we give a quiet English cough of disapproval and politely move on.

Either way, the dark gold ceilings of the Palace remain an impressive sight, although dark is the operative word. A ray of sunshine wouldn’t go amiss. Like the afternoon tea itself, the location should be light and airy; but we’re soon snuggled into a large, comfy leather sofa for two and all is forgotten.

A man then arrives demanding to know the answer to the one question in life it is always worth giving some thought to: our tea preferences. Two steaming cups of Earl Grey later, we sit confronted by three tiers of east meets west delicacy.

We asked for a mix of English and Arabic, we weren’t disappointed. What arrives is a study in neatness. On the first tier lie circular sandwiches of cucumber and salmon, hefty wedges of egg and cress and an Arabic-style meat sandwich that offers a dash of the exotic.

They don’t disappoint, but moving on to the second tier we are confronted with dry pain du chocolat (where the ‘chocolat’ appeared to be largely l’absent) and the usual Arabic date and sponge cake far too dense and heavy for a light afternoon tea. We shouldn’t be so jaded, but we were after ‘occasion’, so we skip a tier and grab a mini chocolate torte to compensate. It is flecked with gold leaf – either that or the ceiling is flaking. As the chocolate coats the inside of my mouth, I make a bid for individualism and jam a strawberry in there too, then sink back into the sofa in raptures.

Our sense of pomp fully restored, we delve into the scones, lathering them up with jam and clotted cream. It can’t go wrong, and stretching out on the sofa, we once more feel the excitement in our cream-clotted veins. And so it appears that it’s true, afternoon tea is a universal language – it just needs a bit of chocolate and cream to grease the wheels.

• Previous reviews
  • 13 December,2009- reviewed by Time Out Abu Dhabi staff
  • 30 December,2008- reviewed by Time Out Abu Dhabi staff

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