Afternoon Tea at The Lounge by Aman

What is one of my favourite things to do? For anyone who knows me they know that I love to go to afternoon tea. Currently I only have one friend in Japan who enjoys afternoon tea, this means I have a long list of places where I will drag her too. 

First on the list is the tea at the Aman hotel. It can be a little hard to find so my suggestion is once you are close to the location make sure you keep an eye on the signs or you might end up walking past it. It is in Otemachi tower, though it doesn't look like it from where I walked past. My friend also walked past it so luckily it wasn't just me. 

The staff is lovely, I ended up waiting in the tiny lobby space for an hour as my friends phone was broken and she ended up being a little later than she thought. The man who was down there phoned up to the Lounge to let them know and to change our reservation time, which was a surprise because I thought he was going to throw me out! I hate waiting at fancy hotels, I feel incredibly out of place.

The tea we had was the regular afternoon tea which the Aman calls the Black Afternoon Tea. 

Tea began with the Blueberry and Cassis soup, Champagne Espuma. Which was one of my favourite parts of the tea, this surprised me because I'm usually not a bug fan of Cassis.

We chose the Soft Peach tea to start with. Our server recommended we get one pot to share between the both of us so we did. The tea pot comes with it's own little warmer. This small detail is a very nice touch, especially since I've found this pretty rare. I wish more places would include this.

My friend had let them know that there were some things I don't eat so I got an entire plate of savouries all to myself. 

Let's begin with the savouries. First up we have the Garlic Crouton on the top right. It's decent, I don't have anything to complain about but it was probably the least exciting item on the menu and I'm still not entirely sure what the filling was. The Kebab sandwich on the bottom left was a surprise because I've never had kebab with my tea before. I prefer having a regular size kebab but this one was yummy for it's size. The Roasted Duck, Kintoki Carrot Tart on the bottom right was very good, in fact it was my companions favourite! In the middle is the Parmesan Brandade, however it includes traces of fish so they substituted mashed potatoes and Parmesan for me. We both thought the black part was foam however we discovered it was an edible tasteless wafer. Lot's of laughing was involved. Next we  Finally we arrive to my favourite, the Cauliflower Mousse. This was by far the most difficult thing to eat, the veggies only help you scoop out so much. I ended up doing the best I could with my fork, I was eating as much of it as I could. Later we realized that the remaining part of the edible wafer could be used to help eat some more of this.

She thought she was attempting to eat plastic

 For our second choice of tea we each had one of the seasonal iced teas. I tried the Plaisir Jemme, it looked nice however I decided to only stick with the hot teas after it.

Then came the sweets, this part was interesting as they brought a trunk of sweets out and let you choose what you wanted. I unfortunately didn't get a picture of the trunk when it was full but this gives you an idea of what it looks like.

I chose the Persimmon Tart, Pear Financier, Yuzu Citrus and Meringue Tart, Strawberry and Pistachio Pound Cake. All were good but my favourite was the yuzu tart. Unfortunately my companion did not enjoy two of her sweets so that was disappointing.

The scones were separate and were Plain and Green Tea. They came with clotted cream, several homemade jams and honey. Japan never seems to get scones right, I've had a good scone at one place only! I can't eat green tea so my friend ate it for me, she didn't enjoy it. The plain one was okay, could be way better but it is Japan. The Jams were good so I had fun trying them out.

Finally we come to the very top, the Raspberries and Pâte de Fruits in Chocolate Trunk. The entire trunk is edible, the bottom was a cookie and the sides and top were chocolate. This was the most visually pleasing part of the tea and an interesting idea. It just made the tea a little more fun in my opinion.

You have two hours for this tea, however since we were late we only had one and a half hours so I felt rushed at the end. While it's not my favourite it's still a lovely tea that I would recommend if you have time, the price also is fairly reasonable for afternoon tea at a hotel. Where should I try next? If you have any recommendations let me know!