Met Bar

I have been coming here for many years now and it’s been amazing
Now with new management I absolutely love the place
I had an amazing raspberry tea with scones
Delicious French fries and some champagne.
I love the ambience the calmness and Britt of this place.
I recommend everyone to come here it’s really nice

A fine evening was had on the hottest day so far of the year, we were glad to slowly return to normal sat at the bar, having our bar man show us a fine selection of cocktails, this one was inspired for Sept London Fashion Week, the designer Matthew Williamson, and was called Mellow Yellow, the others to ask for were Tempered Gold, Muted Desire (partner in crime with me favourite) ‘Mary Mary quite Contrary’ & ‘Rich Smoky & Moody’

I stayed at the Metropolitan Hotel for the first time recently and I went in on the last day there to have a light lunch in the Met Bar. Service was terrific. Friendly, efficient and did not hurry me. I wanted to enjoy my Chablis and chicken salad, and I did. Very fresh ingredients and just what I was looking for on a Friday to wrap up my trip to London.

Get the Joan Collins to whet your appetite prior to dinner. On Your Marks is good *any* time, seriously — and the Jockey Cocktail is a perfect apertif. The bartenders are excellent and I already miss this bar.

I really shouldn’t go to the Met Bar. I’m not really the clientelle they want to attract. Yeah, I might work in the meeja, but I’m certainly not cool and i do not have the wallet-​y fortitude to afford anything they serve without sharp intake of breath, mental budget recalculations, and utter shock.
Still, I’ve been there a few times now and I can’t help but have a good time. I’ve hung out with Britain’s next Top Model, and discussed the latest death metal releases with Slipknot in there.
To be honst, it’s not that special. Yeah, it’s a very nice, clean bar with plenty of seats, great staff who know what they are doing, but it’s not got any massive USPs.
I guess getting in is half the fun. Once you can, it’s just damn expensive.

for photos of scary cakes and more please visit my blog

In general, I am not a big fan of afternoon tea. It is kind of fun once a year or so but otherwise I just prefer lunches and dinners and having afternoon tea means you can’t have a proper one of either. And somehow it just never tastes very good. So when I was invited by the lovely Diana@MassayTravel to the ‘Day of the Dead’ de-​light afternoon tea at the Met Bar adjacent to the Metropolitan Hotel in Mayfair I was skeptical to say the very least. I was expecting soggy sandwiches (I don’t know how you feel about it but I have never quite understood the attraction of cucumber sandwiches), greasy scones and overly sweet and buttery cakes.
Little did I know the Met Bar does a light (maybe calling it ‘low calorie’ or ‘healthy’ would be one step too far) afternoon tea (‘de-​light’ you see!) and I found it to be surprisingly successful. The amount of sugar, butter and fat is minimized while the flavour is retained. Even though I might have defeated the purpose slightly by eating twice as much.
Before I tell you some details about the food I will have to point out one major drawback for afternoon tea at the Met Bar the atmosphere. There basically is none. The Met Bar might work well as a late night bar, but in the afternoon it just feels like a late night bar during the day. If you are after the traditional English style I refer you to the Wolseley or the Hilton, enjoy your cucumber sandwiches!
I however choose food over atmosphere any time, especially when it is not only tasty but also very pretty. The upcoming occasion of Halloween was interpreted a bit more freely by the Met Bar patissier (who I heard is Austrian, of course the cakes had to be good!) resulting in a Day of the Dead theme. The Day of the Dead is a holiday in Mexico celebrated on the 2^nd November to remember the dead. A very typical symbol for this holiday is the skull, here made out of white chocolate topping a tasty and moist Cocoa cupcake. Next to it there is the bleeding Strawberry cupcake in case you were wondering.
My clear favourite was the casket shaped chili-​chocolate mud pie. The advertised chili was unfortunately not detectable but still it was very good with scrumptious dark chocolate, deliciously moist. And such a cute skull, you almost didn’t want to eat it!
For me a new concept were the breadless sandwiches. Considering that sandwich bread it not exactly the pinnacle of culinary sophistication I think it is a brilliant idea. And it means you can eat more cake! The flavours were rather nice and had the spice that the chocolate cake was lacking: we had seriously spicy jalapeño foam, crayfish, lime (the taste was good but did not like the consistency of the foam) and tequila jelly, chicken fajita, sour cream and refried bean mousse (so so) as well as guacamole, spicy mango & tomato salsa (very nice and again spicy). These little savory dishes also proved to be a good palate cleanser between all the sweets.
Some more sweet stuff: here we have a ginger and lemon cupcake on the right, then a de-​hydrated cookie which reminded me of Austrian Christmas cookies, and last but not least a traditional Mexican tea cakes with a cherry filling.
But of course no afternoon tea without scones and these ones were perfect. Light and fluffy, served with crème fraîche instead of clotted cream (I like it better acutally) and jam with the taste of strawberry fields in summer.
All these delicacies (one of these towers is for 2 people) costs you 25 pounds per person including tea (we could choose between English Breakfast and Earl Grey, I did not investigate whether other options are available), which is not exactly a bargain but if you consider that you can skip lunch and dinner And for those of you who don’t have a chance to sample the Halloween afternoon tea, I heard that there will be a Christmas themed one coming up.

London’s original ‘it’ bar and, of an evening, the go to pick up joint even now for the out of town elite (or expense account business types rolling in from Nobu upstairs). They’ve got a door policy, but these days it seems to extend as far as checking whether you can pick up a tab stretching into the hundreds for premium cocktails and sold up bottles of champagne.
A small space with a handful of deep red leather banquettes, an impressively long bar and a tiny dancefloor for the tiny models and their beaus who occupy it nightly. There’s little to no design to speak of other than lacquerwork walls and a couple of generic chinoiserie frills.