Happy New Year (again) Garmanvsfood family. Hope you have had or are having a good celebration with your family however way possible. It has been a subdued celebration for most of us but as I said before, we MADE IT!
After our homemade brunch, we took a wander and ended up at the Hilton in St. Julians. We decided to have afternoon tea because why not? Plus, we wanted to know what a traditional Maltese afternoon tea would be like… when in Rome and all that. The menu was pretty much standard (European) afternoon tea. However, these guys do something a lickle different, you can have a gin afternoon tea people! Yep! G I N!!! there was no way we were passing this up..
As with European style afternoon tea, we had a selection of sandwiches – lemon cured salmon, fresh coriander & cream cheese; brie & spicy grape jam; cucumber, mint & cream cheese; chicken liver pate on toasted ciabatta with orange marmalade. Parmesan cheese scones (not gonna lie, I initially though these were cheese scones, instead, these were plain scones topped with parmesan cheese) still good with fresh clotted cream and seasonal preservatives. For pastries – berry and bourbon vanilla verrine, strawberry and diplomat cream tart and raspberry macaroon made the cut. *cue in controversial statement* I am not keen on macaroons and not entirely sure why? The cakes were lemon and poppy seed, berry, date and orange cake. I have to say I really liked the cakes; they were a good size,
tasty and more significantly were ‘sponge like’ aka dry. No, I don’t mean the cakes didn’t have the moistness (they were perfect) I just don’t do cakes with cream or spreads in the middle of them. Solz, it is a no from me! Up until the tea tray was presented, I still had not registered that we were having gin and tonic as our beverage. However, they did deliver – a double shot of Hendricks gin and tonic! As I write this I am smiling because, well, G&T. Don’t get me wrong, I am aware of champagne afternoon tea, Fortnum & Mason as well as the Ritz but this really had us tickled still!
All in all, good fun! Malta is turning out to be interesting, looking forward to exploring all it’s quirks!
2021 food adventures off on a good start!
cheers
Ndidi