Tea for Me - Emperor's Lounge, Taj Mahal Hotel - New Delhi, India

In my iPad and my iPhoto collection on my MacBook Air, I have a ton of notes and photos for thousands of blog posts.  Unfortunately, I lead a very busy life and haven't made as much time for blogging as I would like to - so this blog post is going back to events from almost a year ago. 

Last Christmas and New Year's, I was in India with my sister Squidge.  Before I headed back to the States, I had tea at the Emperor's Lounge at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi.

I love doing tea - it is one of my favorite activities - it feels civilized and relaxing and healing, like a type of meditation. 

Although in India, many of the places I visited were decorated for Christmas.  I sat down at a lovely, regal-looking chair in the Emperor's Lounge and watched the steward light floating candles in a mini moat in the lobby as I awaited my "Victoria's Tea - tea plus delicious sweet and savory bites."

Fuzzy picture but it is candles and petals in a mini moat

By the way, the staff is crazy tickled that I am typing in the Emperors Lounge.  Their looks seem to say "Silly Americans and their overblown work ethic - not stopping to truly appreciate tea ... instead type, type, type, eat, eat, eat!"  And dont get me started at the crazy looks I am getting by photographing each of the tiny morsels.  LilyOnTheLam.com readers - I do it for you!

A girl, a teacup and an iPad with a keyboard from Brookstone

The first plate of delicious tea treats contained three mini muffins and what I think are two cheese straws - puff pastry twists.

I ordered the Nilgiri Winter tea.  The tea menu described it as fruity and astringent - but honestly it just tasted like Lipton.

Next came a three tiered tray of delights.  In America, I am used to scones on the bottom tier, sandwiches on the second tier and desserts on the top tier.  In India or at least at The Emperor's Lounge, the layers did not follow this order.

On the first tier, there were several sandwiches - a cucumber and cheese sandwich with dried out bread, a chicken roll up, a salmon open-faced sandwich, what i suspect to be a chicken salad sandwich and an avocado and tomato open-faced sandwich with a savory spice on top.  The avocado sandwich was very tasty.

On the second tier, there was a macaron - chocolate with chocolate filling.  It was pretty much your standard macaron but good.  There also what appears to be a chocolate mousse tartlet - thick shortbread cookie crust with a cross between chocolate mousse and frosting - with a hazelnut topper.  It was pretty good but too much cookie base.  I would have liked a thinner bottom crust with 2 kinds of layered filling instead.

There was also a strawberry fruit tartlet- same high bottom tasteless shortbread crust as the previous - whipped cream, strawberries and what i believe is a rim of pistachio crumbles.  I would have preferred a shot glass of strawberries dolloped with whipped cream and dusted with pistachio crumbles than this tart as the crust adds nothing flavorwise and everything calorie-wise.  

I watched something recently (most likely Real Housewives of Atlanta) where they served small glasses (martini glasses perhaps) of strawberries dolloped with whipped cream.  Thinking of doing this with small plastic cups at my next party -- who doesn't like berries and cream?

Last but maybe not least on the 2nd tier-- a four layer cream and cake mini slice ... kind of like a spongy baked cream with a subtle tasting thin slice of chocolate cake in between each laye, with mini chocolate chips between the 2nd and 3rd layer.  Not bad at all.

As if the three tier server was not enough, I also received a regular scone and chocolate chip scone with clotted cream, apple sauce and some sort of preserves.  They were a bit heavy, but the applesauce was lovely.

For the top tier, there was another puff pastry straw except this one was dry, not buttery tasting, no taste of cheese... a brush of butter and some aged Parmesan could turn this straw around!

There was also an olive straw - it's a whole green olive with pimento stuffed inbetween puff pastry - I'm used to seeing black olive flecks kneaded throughout - this one looks like a Muppets character!  It was quite nice - a good combo of rich and buttery with tangy and briny.  I guess I shouldnt have mocked the whole green olive approach!

There was also a shortbread cookie round.  It was dry and tasteless - but that's how I find all shortbread - am I the only one who doesnt appreciate shortbread?

There was a piece of biscotti.  Instead of being rock hard like most biscotti, it was soft.   I suspect humidity is to blame.  However I cannot blame humidity for the lack of anise taste.  It is palatable because it tastes like an almond cookie, but I never would guess it is biscotti by taste alone.

You may look like biscotti, but you don't taste like it!

There was also a chocolate chip studded chocolate cookie- very dry and surprisingly unchocolatey.  However I'm American and we waaaay overdo things in the sugar department, so as an accompaniment to a hot milky tea, it works quite well because it wasn't too sweet.

Last but not least, there was some sort of studded cookie stick.  It was a buttery puff pastry with some sort of unknown topping.  Nuts?  Cheese?  Who knew?  Despite the mustery, it was pretty darn tasty.

Overall, this was a crazy amount of food and tea in a luxe setting for a pretty decent price (by American standards).  Since I was staying at the hotel and I think I belonged to some favored travel club or just some "I'm cool so give me freebies" club, I received 20% off of all food at the hotel's restaurants.  My bill was 650 rupees minus 130 rupees - plus 81 rupees VAT - so 601 rupees total.  Cool beans - best deal of the day!  

While not every treat with this tea was spectacular, there were enough delights that for the price and the atmosphere I very much enjoyed afternoon tea at the Emperor's Lounge at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, India.  If you're in New Delhi, check it out!

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