The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Las Vegas is one of the newer venues in the city having opened in 2009. It has sought to set itself above many of the other hotels by offering higher levels of comfort and service. With that inevitably comes higher prices, which makes this one of the most expensive places to eat in the city.
However, the surroundings, the food, and the service were worth every cent. We decided to have afternoon tea in the Tea Lounge. This very British pastime is actually quite popular in the States, especially in the big cities. It’s just an excuse to eat and drink between meals.
The Tea Lounge is on the 23rd floor and has unparalleled views of the Strip. It feels exclusive, and the surroundings just add to it. The place is smart and quiet and an ideal getaway from the madness of the Strip.
"It feels exclusive, and the surroundings just add to it."
We had the Veuve Cliquot afternoon tea, which consisted of a platter of sandwiches and another of pastries. We had the special Mandarin orange blend tea, with vanilla. It’s made especially for the hotel and tasted delicious.
We also tried peace through water, nut cracker and cold and flu blend teas. Each were lovely, but didn’t come up to the orange blend in terms of taste. The sandwich platter was nice. It had a variety of salmon and cucumber, egg salad, black forest ham and chicken curry flavoured sandwiches. Not your usual sandwich selection, which made a nice change.
There were also fresh scones on offer, which we tried too. They came with a variety of spreads, such as Devonshire, raspberry spread and orange kumquat. They were all very tasty, if a little on the sweet side.
Next up were the pastries, just looking at this platter made our mouths water. They looked fresh, sweet and just begged to be eaten, and we were happy to oblige. We tried praline opera, pistachio opera, blackberry tart, raspberry ganache tart and a chocolate kumquat cup.
We couldn’t talk about our Veuve afternoon tea without mentioning the drink itself. It’s our champagne of choice, and complemented the tea nicely. To my mind, Veuve is the perfect blend of sweet, yeast, wine and effervescence.
I would definitely suggest afternoon tea at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.
The Bill: £55 per head
