Afternoon Tea is always a special treat but overlooking City Hall and bustling Donegall Place is something a bit different.
The spacious upstairs of the restaurant — with its exposed brick walls, plush velvet seating and atmospheric lighting — offers a welcoming and comforting experience allowing you to take your time and fully unwind.
As soon as we were seated in our booth, we were offered drinks and given a brief explanation of the menu. I opted for a glass of Prosecco to accompany the Afternoon Tea because, why not? Sundays are for treats and not even thinking about the week ahead, so I decided to fully embrace this mantra.
After a bit of a wait, the first half of our treats arrived, with the savouries up first.
The platter of bitesize snacks included brioche navette filled with prawns and topped in a marie rose sauce, a mushroom and spinach bouchee, boudin noir sausage roll, a tomato wafer ‘cone’ with a scoop of goats cheese and a demitasse of white onion and truffle soup.
Cafe Parisien, Belfast
The standout winners for this course, for me, was the goats cheese cone and the demitasse of soup.
Despite being small in stature, this was a treat for the taste buds, packed full of flavour and just enough of everything… I devoured the plate.
One complaint on the savouries would probably be the lack of the classic afternoon tea staple: the finger sandwich.
While this was a French take on the classic, they missed a beat on leaving out the bread course, something which adds a bit more of a filling in the middle of the mountain of sweets and makes it a bit more of a substantial meal out.
Next up was the sweets in the classic tiered afternoon tea tray.
This included a fruit scone each, served with jam and clotted cream, and while toasted on the outside and perfectly cooked on the inside, the scones were quite big in size and I would have preferred two small ones instead.
The afternoon tea trays, in all honesty, looked rather bare when it first came out and there was only one treat each, no doubles — though the treats themselves were beautifully created.
Accompanying the scones was a salted caramel macaron, a chocolate cup with amarena cherry, a lemon curd tartlet with raspberry topping, a choux bun filled with hazelnut cream and a French martini panna cotta.
This was a well-rounded balance of sweet flavours — a mix of creams and pastries and tart citrus and berry tastes — which made it a pleasure to eat.
On the one hand this was a great afternoon tea in a beautiful location; plenty of rich flavours packed on the plate and it was just enough to eat. But on the other hand, I was hungry a couple of hours later.
Café Parisien Afternoon Tea is a great experience for those looking to try something different for a special treat, but some words of advice are don’t go hungry.
Savoury options at Cafe Parisien’s afternoon tea
The food
Total £73.45