We headed over to The Alice to try their sumptuous Alice in Wonderland themed Afternoon Tea. Read our verdicts below!

Sophia

Scrolling through blogs of Mother’s Day activity recommendations, afternoon tea is among the most frequently featured, year on year. It’s not hard to see why: when done right, the delightfully picky assortment of scones, cakes, and finger sandwiches makes for a fancy yet unfussy meal, and invites languid enjoyment that allows conversation to flow around it.

With that in mind, Niamh and I were excited to take the new Alice in Wonderland themed Afternoon Tea at The Alice for a spin.

The Alice is the all-day British Brasserie attached to the stately, 5-star Randolph Hotel. It has a fascinating blend of luxurious trappings and fairly affordable prices (the two course set menu, for example, is £29). It’s a wise move for appealing to tourists and the wider public, who may not be able to stay in the Randolph but still want to micro-dose its majesty.

The dining room in which we were seated did share the same refined and historic feel as the rest of the hotel, with cavernous ceilings, flowing drapes, an array of painted portraits, and plush furniture in bright jewel tones. While some luxury establishments push to make every surface look freshly made, part of the opulence here is in how ornate and specific every decor choice feels.

Onto the food and drink, first of all, the pricing. One portion of this afternoon tea comes with a hot drink or their special mocktail “Drink Me” (more on that in Niamh’s section), alongside four finger sandwiches, two scones with clotted cream and jam, and five sweet treats that blur the lines between pastry and chocolate. This is priced at £39.50, and aimed at being a single portion, so if you were to treat Mum to the experience, it would come to £79. It can be upgraded to £49.50/£99 and include a glass or two of Nyetimber Demi-Sec or Nyetimber Classic Cuvée MV.

This is slightly more than one might pay at other establishments, so beyond the beautiful venue, was it luxurious enough to justify the upmarket price? In this case, I would say yes, absolutely.

Starting with the tea, it was loose leaf with a strainer, served in a massive pot with a generous pitcher of milk on the side. There was enough for me to enjoy three mugs throughout our meal. As for the food, the obvious quality of the ingredients shone through every course, from the springiness of sandwich bread to the buttery crumble of the scones. Among the finger sandwiches I’d particularly like to single out the cucumber and cream cheese, a flavour combo that almost always feels bland and obligatory. Here, livened up with mint and cumin, it was genuinely refreshing, flavourful and moreish. The thoughtful flavour profiles behind each creation here gives me confidence to recommend the fully vegan version of the menu, which can be viewed online and includes pairings like avocado and rose harrissa or red pepper and hummus. It’s worth noting the menu can also be adjusted to be gluten free at no additional cost.

The service throughout was also swift, friendly and unobtrusive.

The portion sizes paired with the richness of the sweet items, meant the meal felt very generous (definitely skip lunch beforehand!). The attention to detail, from the keyhole on the menu to the artfully decorated cakes made the experience one to remember.

In terms of a gift for mother’s day, a birthday, or another celebration, it’s hard to imagine this going down poorly.

Niamh

Where Sophia opted for the chai in classic tea party fashion, I plumped for the ‘Drink Me’ mocktail, a blend of cocktail pineapple and caramel chai tea finished with ‘amaretti’ cherry and lime (and of course, the iconic ‘Drink Me’ label). It tastes, in the most complimentary way possible, like if a Bakewell tart were a cocktail; it’s also lovely to enjoy a mocktail where you can really feel the harmony of flavours, rather than just being glorified fruit juice! If you have a sweet tooth like me it really hits the spot, but I can understand if it might be too sugary for some.

Which brings us to the sweets! Alice in Wonderland being such a staple of Oxford iconography, it would be easy for a themed meal to veer into gimmicky territory. The Alice cleverly sidesteps this by making understated minimalism the word of the day in their presentation. Visually, the sweets are the star of their Carrollian twist on the classic afternoon tea. Salted caramel bonbons are dyed a sumptuous pink and purple ombré in a subtle nod to the Cheshire Cat; the Queen of Hearts is called to mind in an entremet so rich it could only be royal, and crisp, flaky bakewell bites are artfully crafted into tiny ‘unbirthday cakes’, still gratifyingly warm at the centre and finished with a marbled chocolate ‘candle’. My personal favourite of this platter has to be the ‘White Rabbit’ chocolate pocket watch, a snappily tart passion fruit jelly sandwiched between a prune sponge and a thin layer of white chocolate moulded into a watch face. Amid several mouthwatering but perhaps less complexly flavoured treats, its multilayered bite stands out for all the right reasons.

You probably shouldn’t make the mistake we did of starting with savoury and working your way up - it’s a LOT of sugar to put in your system at once and, while delicious, can be hard to finish if you don’t pace yourself. I’d recommend alternating between the sweets and savouries to reset the palate, and the sandwich selection is ideal for this, particularly the cucumber, which muddles cumin and mint through its cream cheese to bring a herbal flair to the finger-food staple.

We get a similar story with the smoked salmon; the easy pitfall of a smoked salmon sandwich is that it can so easily be over smoked and/or underseasoned. This is neither - the smoke is subtle and the dill and capers running it creates a delicate piquancy that lingers on the palate without overstaying its welcome. If there is a weak link, the Wookey Hole Cheddar in the cheese and onion sandwich is somewhat overpowered by its accompanying grape chutney, but this is more than excused once you get to the springy exuberance of the beef pastrami and piccalilli, its tenderly salted meat and zingy relish making it my favourite of the bunch. It’s worth noting that vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free substitutes for everything included on the menu are available on request, so don’t let my carnivore tastes stop you from giving this a try!

No afternoon tea is complete without a good scone, and The Alice’s are very good indeed - robust, fluffy and well risen, with generous lashings of clotted cream and jam to serve yourself according to preference (we both subscribe to the Devon method, sorry, Cornish fans). Regrettably, the both of us were so full we couldn’t manage our second, something our server reliably informs us happened to him as well. This is a great sign for the meal’s value, though - where some afternoon teas can be a rather slight affair for your pound, we can both testify that you will leave feeling like you got your money’s worth (and in my case, with a take-home box of spare scones under your arm).