Um, yes. We still don’t know what it was! I was treated to a trip to the ‘posh’ tea place, an utterly bemusing experience. First of all we were kept waiting for absolutely ages, apparently because we hadn’t made a reservation. Hm, we thought, it must be really busy, if only we’d known, but then why were those people with reservations waiting for so long, too?
After a couple of eons, someone came out to show us to a table, it was difficult to find a place to sit with all the empty tables in the place. We chose to sit outside, the came out to greet us personally, and to explain the menu to us. We learned about the history of the cafe, how she created the dishes, and all about the crumpets. Crumpets so huge that she recommended sharing. We were pretty indecisive about choosing from the overpriced menu, so the waiter went away while we made up our minds. Time dragged on, we started to get miffed, and just as we were getting ready to make our escapes, he came back. Rats.
Looking at the scary prices, we opted for two different teas to drink (no sharing allowed), a huge crumpet (sharing recommended) and a cup of soup each. The food arrived, not particularly quickly for what we’d ordered. Well the soup was nice, but for that price I’d like a little bit more than a single tiny ladle full, especially if there’s no bread with the soup! No bread! In all my years of catering and eat out, I have never been without bread. Next came the huge crumpet which turned out to be about one and a half times as big as a proper crumpet, it was fried, served halved with butter, jam and some weird white concoction called “Mock Devonshire Cream). What the….?
Hmmm, so we split the not-so-huge-after-all crumpet in two and I added some jam (which was good) and avoided the butter (the crumpet was fried already for god’s sake) and the Mock Devonshire Cream (I don’t eat Mock things at the best of times). My companion was suffering from disbelief from the cream in all its weird whiteness and asked my opinion of it. I agreed with her opinion, whatever Mock Devonshire Cream is (you made it, really? what with?) I won’t be eating it again! It was whiter than any dairy product I’ve ever seen, I suspect it wasn’t a dairy product at all, weirdly thick with air holes from whipping or perhaps even beating into submission, the cream had that greasy mouth feel you get from artificial fats and Bird’s Dream Topping. Bleurgh.
However, the Earl Grey tea was good, served in reasonably large pots complete with tea strainers. We could actually have shared, between the pots were large enough. I drank it all on the basis that it was paid for and I wasn’t going to leave it! 
So we left, still hungry, a little bit poorer, feeling like it was a very expensive fuss about nothing and just what the hell was that cream anyway! I’m still bemused that the tea room sold books about English and American tea rooms with recipes in them, but didn’t seem to have read a single one. I wish I’d had my camera, we could have taken a photo so you could all see the ‘cream’ and the ‘crumpet’.
Crumpets – toast them and then put butter on them. Jam if you like.
Devonshire Cream is supposed to be Clotted Cream made from cream from real cows that live in a field and go moo. Jersey cows, real ones not mock ones. They live in Idaho and Oregon, I’ve seen them! Yes, and they don’t even moo with an accent. (OK so that bit probably isn’t true.)
This is a crumpet accept no immitations.
