Malmaison

The venue was Malmaison in Montpellier, Cheltenham on a mild Monday afternoon. Having booked the lunch as a gift at Xmas, these past few months of anticipation and excitement had boiled down to this one hour of pure exhilaration. Sod Creamfields, this was cream filled and where the party was at.

On arrival we were shown to our nicely laid table in a bay window with only 2 other gents in the restaurant, but they left probably feeling a bit underwhelmed after seeing our fare being delivered to our table! Thus the atmosphere was rather staid. However, the atmosphere in my stomach was more like a 90s rave up ready to explode.

The lady serving us was nice and attentive, first bringing our tea, decanted from a smart looking pot into a tea cup of similar design. She did initially forget the milk, but I soon forgot this minor infringement as my mind boggled at the amount of delicacies brought to our table. Slider burger, beef brisket, buttermilk chicken — all good without the wow factor.

Prepared fresh out the oven, the scone was warm, crisp on the outside, moist on the inside and full of fruit. While slightly on the small side, it was quite delicious, served with cream and toffee sauce. The cream was slightly runny. I like my clotted cream to be clotted, and no option was given with regards to jam or butter. But I'm not bitter, I just like to have a choice. If offered toffee cream again I would politely decline and insist on a nice sweet strawberry jam. As it should be.

The sweets included a crème brûlée, a fab lolly made of chocolate and cream, a cookie dough cream thing and a carrot cake full of cream and not much cake (or carrot for that matter). For someone that doesn't really like cream, doing cream tea reviews really shouldn't be my forte. The lolly fell off the stick almost immediately and had to be eaten with a spoon. A lolly can't be a lolly without a lolly stick.

Overall a 3.5. It's not their fault I booked on a quiet Monday afternoon, but it is their fault that no jam was on offer. Value: having paid £35 for 2 through Wowcher I was very happy — the full price of £59 would have left me scoring a 3.5.