World’s most expensive afternoon tea

A luxury hotel in the UK has unveiled the world’s most expensive afternoon tea – priced at a whopping £550 per couple.

The afternoon tea, available at Cliveden House near London’s Heathrow Airport, has been created by the hotel’s executive head chef Carlos Martinez.

It includes white truffles at £2,500 per kilogram, Beluga Caviar at £4,000 per kilogram and Da Hong Pao Tea, which is harvested from one-thousand-year-old plants and costs over £2,000 per kilogram because of its rarity.

The afternoon tea comes with a glass of Dom Perignon Rose, described as the ‘King of Champagnes’.

It’s only fitting that the world’s most expensive afternoon tea also features the ‘Cliveden House Chocolate Cake with Gold Leaf’, which is made using the world’s most expensive chocolate, Amedei Porcelana, and is paired with the world’s most expensive coffee, Kopi Luwak.

If you’re looking for something lighter on both your tummy and pocket, you can always go for the hotel’s Platinum Club Sandwich, priced at £100.

The sandwich is made from 30-month air-cured Ibérico ham, described by the Spanish as the ‘fourth gastronomic wonder of the world’, poulet de Bresse, white truffles, quail eggs, semi-dried Italian tomatoes and 24-hour fermented sourdough bread.

James Parkinson, executive head chef at Von Essen Hotels Group which Cliveden House is part of, said: “All hotels in the collection, including Cliveden, are hugely popular for afternoon tea. We wanted to create the best afternoon tea experience in the world and I think with this selection, we have achieved our goal.”

But it’s not all in the name of excess. Cliveden will be donating 50 per cent of profits to Marie Curie Cancer Care from each of the world’s most expensive afternoon teas sold between June 12 and July 12, 2011.