How a 5-Star London Hotel Prepares the Most Iconic Afternoon Tea Service

 

we need to start to finish all the pastries for the afternoon tea. So today's a big day, we have 190 covers. All the team is is on it already. (suspense percussive music) (chefs softly chatting) So basically I finish the mango and passion fruit cake. You have biscuit sponge on the bottom, inside you have a mango gel with vanilla ganache around. This is passion fruit and mango jelly. So we dip inside, once, we clear the bottom and we come on top of the sweet paste. So basically in the morning, we finished all the cake for the day, for the afternoon tea, and in the afternoon we start to make the pastry for the day after. The goal is to do a ring and at the end to close the ring because we are going to add some fresh passion fruit. If it's not closed properly, you have the juice going out. I love piping, I love piping. So this will be more for the taste and to have more acidity and break a bit of the sweetness of the cake. Yeah, acidity, bitterness, I like it. So as you can see, you have the fresh Mexican marigold, the goal is to pick the good one. (knife gently slicing) (funky jazz music) So the afternoon tea in London, UK is very important. Today's Sunday, so it'll be the busiest day of the week. Our customers are expecting a big experience because first, it's Claridge's, so it's one of the most famous afternoon teas in London. And of course, it's about the cost. It costs a lot, so we just need to make sure everyone is happy at the end. The most iconic items for the afternoon tea, in general, and mostly for Claridge's, will be the scone, a classic one since many, many years. So I will introduce Jessy, our head baker. - So we have the flour. (Jessy tapping) We have the sugar with salt, the baking powder (Jessy tapping) and the butter, really cold butter. - If something is going wrong with the scones, in general it's the mixing. If we mix too much, it will be not the same texture at the end, and if we don't mix enough, it will be not the same texture as well. - I never heard about scones before. I learned this recipe in about a week, a bit of practice, made a few mistakes, of course. 

We're just going to take half of it for the plain scone. I'm going to weigh up everything and divide by two. (knife slicing) And we're okay. I will keep the ugly part on top because when we're going to cut them, I will flip them to get the clean part. - [Chef Hauchard] So per day on the weekends will be 500 scones. So 250 plain, 250 raisin, and during the week it can be 200, 220. (uplifting instrumental music) - So this is the egg wash, we call it, we call it 'dorure' in French, of course. So it's only egg yolk and 25% of cream inside, to give this shiny layer on top. (inspirational music) (pans shuffling) - So as you can see, it's out of the oven now. Very soft, still very soft. Inside, good texture. - I'm always affected by this cracking, try to avoid it. Need maybe more practice. Maybe you need to be British to understand everything but. . . - So I will show you the way to eat a perfect scone for me. So basically a scone is not a brioche, not a bread. The kind of texture is nothing we can compare, to be honest, but it's something we need to eat hot, a bit soft and with clotted cream and jam of course. Perfect. So now it's 15 past 10, it will be time to finish quickly the chocolate tart. So the classic pastry for the afternoon tea at the Claridge's will be the chocolate tart. So time to put the caramel inside, to add the ganache so it will be half an hour, so that we bake everything. So this is chocolate ganache from yesterday. It will be like a surprise, you break the tart and you have the caramel inside. Per week we make, let's say, around 1,000 to 1,200 chocolate tarts. So we probably use between 30 and 40 kilos of butter a day and we can use around 200 eggs a day. So now, baking time. I can say it's the most popular because in general everyone loves chocolate. (uptempo percussive music) Hello, good morning guys. (team indistinctly replies) How are you? - Doing good. - So in general, the afternoon tea pastry is starting with savory tarts or sandwiches. We have one person in charge of the sandwiches. So they are doing the egg and mayonnaise sandwiches, it's one of the best sellers at Claridge's.

I will introduce David, the man for the sandwiches today. So as we can see they started already, since what, one hour? - [David] Yeah. - [Chef Hauchard] Yeah, one hour? - [David] Yeah. - So and until. . . - [David] Until 12:30. - Until 12:30, so and one hour after, we start the service for the afternoon. (funky upbeat music) So, I'm pastry chef since 15 years now. I went to the pastry side because it was natural for me. I did an internship after school and (Chef Hauchard snaps) something happened. We have the breakfast station. After that you have the afternoon tea team, the rest of the afternoon tea team making everything for tomorrow. So this one is for the lemon and mint meringue tart. We do French meringue, we add some icing sugar top and we bake it in the oven. Very high temperature but very quick, to keep the crunchy outside and the soft inside. And this one is the last item, hazelnut Paris-Brest. It's more art for me to create a full afternoon tea than to create a menu for plating desserts. Now we'll start the Genoise sponge. What I expect with the Genoise is to soak a bit of the juice from the insert and from the mango passion fruit cake. It's very important to control and to be consistent. We have a lot of customers coming every week, not every day but sometimes, yes. So just to make sure we have the same quality, the same product every day. If you think something is easy you need to be careful. So now we are in the oven at 180 degrees. 

So now I will show you how to do the vanilla caramel, not sauce, but this will be inside the chocolate tart. If we lose a step or if we don't do a proper step in pastry we lose all of the batch and it's finished. (refrigerator door closing) So now we start to build a mango and passion fruit cake for tomorrow, of course. In the piping bag we have the vanilla with ganache. Here, this is mango gel we made just earlier with the mango puree and agar agar. After that, tiny bit more cream and the biscuit Genoise sponge to finish, that's it. And now in the freezer until tomorrow. So now we have just five minutes before to start sending a few afternoon teas. So just to relax a bit before the service, we'll do a small competition between a Emilien and Paul about writing on the plate. No, pressure. (upbeat music) One more detail at Claridge's is when customers arrive and talk about maybe it's a birthday or it's a celebration, so we have another kind of cake to give to them and we write the message on the plate. Both are very good but Emilien, for me, is the winner is this one but you are not too far. - Thanks, Chef. (everyone chuckles) - My pleasure. In my team, I love the energy inside the team. We have a good energy, we have a good. . . . . . we try to have a good mood every day to make the job better. So now it's 2:30 so it's time for us to plate up everything. Service side, they start already since five minutes to send the sandwiches so it's been for us since 15 minutes. Time to finish, to plate up. We will start to send the scones and pastry. So Amanda, she added on the plate some, not glue, but glaze to stick all the pastries on the plate and like that, it's not moving everywhere and it will be stable because we have stairs to go up, so just to make sure it's coming in front of the customer properly. (bright cheery orchestral music) So yes guys, don't forget to clean properly before plating up everything, please. - [Producer] You look very calm. - Looks like it, but inside, need to be focused. . . People from outside of pastry can think about our cake as very simple because maybe it looks simple or it's nothing crazy, but they don't imagine how hard a job it is, yeah. This job is very, very challenging for me of course because it's a big name, it's a big team, big job. I, of course, plan to do this for the rest of my life because it's not like. . . It's my passion first so I plan to do it all my life. (staff gentle chatting) (uplifting orchestral music) So okay, now it's 4:30, so we sent already a good starter. So we keep going again for at least two hours but we are done with you today.