The Westbury Hotel
You must have Javascript enabled to view this map.
Location:
Harry St, off the top of Grafton St.
Visited:
about 1 year ago
Reviewed by:
Martin McKenna
Rating:
“High tea” is a rather pleasant institution, if a little colonial. A couple of places in Dublin will cater for your desire for a stack of three plates of cucumber sandwiches, scones and pastries. Unfortunately, there are better places than the Westbury for this particular tradition.
The Gallery is the opulent location for afternoon tea in the Westbury, though when we arrived a little after three o’clock we ended up instigating a queuing system for a seat, with two other parties behind us by the time we got a table ten minutes later. Service was prompt, delivering to us linen napkins, silver cutlery and our porcelain service.
For your thirty quid, you get cucumber, ham, egg and smoked salmon sandwiches, two scones with jam and cream, and four pastries. The ham sandwich, optimistically listed in the menu as “honey-glazed Limerick ham”, transported me instantly back to the last time I ate crustless sliced pan with Denny’s ham: primary school. The salmon, astonishingly, hid an atrocious piece of wilted lettuce that’s only rightful place was the compost heap.
Scones were not too big, though the menu’s promised clotted cream was in fact merely whipped cream and the jam was courtesy of Chivers, of the B&B blister-pack sort, though here in miniature glass pots.
Pastries were perfectly serviceable, with the chocolate ganache in a shortbread casing probably the best. Our afternoon tea was very suddenly cleared away however before we had a chance to eat that one though. Admittedly, they were busy but the suddenness jolted with the otherwise genteel atmosphere.
All in all, your mother wouldn’t be disappointed by the Westbury by any stretch, but if you do decide to devote an afternoon to this activity, there are no reasons to choose the Westbury over the Westin on Westmoreland Street, in whose Atrium bar you will receive for the same money much more refined (though tinier) sandwiches, larger scones with home-made preserve and clotted cream (as promised, this time), and better pastries. The tea there is even decanted into the pot that you are served so your last cup isn’t rancidly bitter after having stewed since you began eating. The Westin, though, will meanly charge you an extra fiver for your companion’s tea which the Westbury did not.
