Elaine Simmonds trys out English afternoon tea at the Grand Hotel Europe. (Large jpg - 36K)
For those who are English or like to embrace the traditional English tradition of afternoon tea, it's been a tall order to find a good cuppa anywhere in St Petersburg.
Somehow the water, with all its heavy metals, just isn't conducive to making a good old fashioned cup of tea, and the milk somehow just isn't the same.
A good cup of tea, I am told, should be neither acid nor alkali but neutral. So I went along to the Grand Hotel Europe to give their new afternoon tea session the acid test in the hope that I would finally find a decent cup of tea.
Here they only use specially treated and purified water -- a good start -- and there are a wide variety of teas on offer from Darjeeling and Earl Grey to Ceylon, Lapsang Souchang, Assam and Russian Caravan.
And traditional English afternoon tea wouldn't be complete without scones, cream and jam. Admittedly the cream isn't clotted although the hotel went to quite extraordinary lengths in its attempts to obtain it.
But the sliced Dundee fruit cake, selection of pastries and berry tartlets were the real thing and made a fine accompaniment to the delicate finger sandwiches with salmon, egg mayonnaise and cheeses.
Of course, one could argue that tea isn't exactly English, but rather Indian and Chinese. But it has become an English institution since the days of the Raj, a tradition brought by the East India company. And what is served on the hotel's Mezzanine floor is the nearest thing you'll get to a proper English afternoon tea in St Petersburg.