Note: While we were traveling around Paris, we’ve stopped over to the glamorous principality of Monte Carlo. I will be writing an overview post of this side trip summarizing it all but I’m writing the individual dining establishments first before getting to the aforementioned.
During our stay in Monaco we stopped by Hotel Metropole for afternoon tea (there is an epic lunch at Joël Robuchon but I’ll get to that post in due time). The beautiful pastries and confections on display are from Robuchon’s kitchen. This is not exactly the traditional afternoon tea fare that you’d presume; there’s a smattering of desserts and a list of teas to choose from but it’s not the tiered affair that you might be familiar with. And that is a good thing here since we had another (large) dinner coming up that evening.
We started off with the blended juices like Frosty Lime and Green Chic Mint juice. My friend’s Frosty Lime was a refreshing blend of basil, fresh pineapple juice, celery and lemon juice. My Green Chic Mint was an excellent blended juice (I stressed blended because it’s much thicker than the bottled green juice in the U.S.) of apricot, pineapple, spinach, fresh mint, and honey from their hives — very balanced, well-rounded flavors that doesn’t taste as “green” as it sounds due to the apricot and honey.
As for teas from Ronnefeldt, we had the “Springtime” darjeeling and “Morgentau” (“morning dew”) infused green tea made of sencha with citrus, mango and sunflower. Both were perfectly good, light teas for sipping by itself or paired with pastries.
The trio of loaf cake slices — chocolate, vanilla cake, and lemon glazed were tasty. Not so sweet, fine, fluffy crumb, good flavor and moist. The coffee religieuse was a good classic choux pastry and the coffee flavor was strong. The bowl of sliced fresh strawberries and sugar was a simple but delightful statement about how fresh fruits in its natural state can be mind blowing. The strawberries itself was not sugared and its up to our discretion to add as much as we wanted. We just wanted a touch to add some textural crunch.
I must say, the nougats served on the plate of cakes were amazing. I mean, I was obsessed with their semi-firm, chewy candy that has a good ratio of toasted hazelnuts that I asked for more and I rarely care for nougat.
For more photos of this visit, please CLICK HERE for the complete set or see below:
[alpine-phototile-for-flickr src=”set” uid=”26389565@N00″ sid=”72157673805166146″ imgl=”flickr” shuffle=”1″ style=”gallery” row=”4″ grwidth=”1200″ grheight=”800″ size=”640″ num=”30″ shadow=”1″ border=”1″ align=”center” max=”100″]Information:
Hotel Metropole
Website
4 Avenue de la Madone
98000 Monaco, France
Phone: +377 93 15 15 15
