By Chrissy Iley
What’s not to love about Hello Kitty? It’s a cat, it’s cute, it’s iconic. Of course I have spent large chunks of my life wondering if you can ever be too old for wearing ankle socks with high heels, wearing leather jeans or even mini-skirts. The answer is perhaps. Are you ever too old for Hello Kitty if you don’t have children or Japanese relatives? Perhaps but I personally am not going to go there. I’m going to go to a little oasis in Soho transformed into a Hello Kitty grotto. I’m going to coo when I see a pom pom tree made up with petals of stuffed Hello Kitties, I’m going to sigh when I see a little kitty on the wall playing with its macaroon and I’m going to say yes please to my absolute favourite meal of the day, afternoon tea.
Hello Kitty’s Secret Garden Afternoon Tea comes with an endless array of forbidden sugary delights and the odd savoury treat. You get a choice of some rather lovely teas – Lychee Peach was exotic and perfumey, the Hello Kitty limited edition Apple Tea was strangely refreshing in a mulled wine sort of way. Of course there were pink things aplenty. In fact you are given pink lemonade before you are seated at your grotto table. And that’s just the start of the sugar rush. First off you get snack time sandwiches in the shape of Hello Kitty faces. Obviously no crusts, just ears. Cheese and red onion, hoummus and pepper and cucumber and cream cheese, a personal high.
It all comes in little stacking baskets like crazy kitty dim sum. Next it was lids off to reveal cheese scones which came with fluffy cream cheese and a red pepper marmalade. Then there were the cakes. Kitty’s chocolate mud pie which my friend ordered gluten free and was incredibly moist, fluffy and chocolatey. There was also something called cake truffle which is hard to imagine but take the intensity and texture of a crumbly truffle and make that a berry cake taste. It was delightful and original. And not even incredibly filling. There is a vanilla cookie which was buttery good and a strawberry milkshake Biskie. Imagine milk and cookies all in one mouthful. And there were chocolate dipped strawberries and Pink Lemonade Marshmallows. If you think of marshmallow you often think squidgy, soft. This was a little fizzier and a vibrant pink, not a pastel pink.
Just the day before the afternoon tea I’d watched a programme about Nigel Slater and sweets. He said that a marshmallow was the nearest thing to a kiss on earth. When his mother died, his father who was not emotional or huggy kissy used to give him a couple of marshmallows every night. His version of a good night kiss. The narrator asked Nigel was this enough and he said no not really but obviously he wasn’t having these marshmallows. They really are a full mouth experience.
If you’ve still got room, there’s an apple pie mousse in a swirl with a little butter biscuit on top. It is light but textured. It was a mousse but it seemed to have a crumble cakey content so it was more an apple crumble mousse. If you’ve got room you can have a swirl of ice cream called White’s Ice Kream. I’d love to be able to tell you what was particularly good about this ice cream but we just couldn’t fit it in.
What I loved about this was there was no attention to detail spared. Everything was about Hello Kitty. It’s not just a grotto, it’s a whole world to escape into. A Disney ride that doesn’t go anywhere except to take you on a sugar high, to give you all those emotions of sweet comfort, of kitty comfort and of cake heaven. A cushion for the world.
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All colourings are natural and gluten free options provided. It’s the first pop up in Europe and all the cakes are made especially by Cutter and Squidge, 20 Brewer St, London W1F 0SJ . Visit cutterandsquidge.com to book your table.
Tiny teas for children of 8 and under are £20 / Grown up teas £40.
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