I love English afternoon tea, while some call it a “girl thing” these pictures from the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas may change your mind. Hubs certainly wasn’t complaining as he stuffed his face with tea sandwiches and divine little petite fours lovingly constructed by obsessive culinary geniuses- praise them, bless them, because we”ll be back… We’ve had high tea at Bellagio’s Petrossian (twice) and while it was excellent, the Mandarin raised the bar so high no other place can hold a candle to it.

For the record, if you don’t like scones it’s probably because you’ve never eaten a good one. I make (or rather, cooks illustrated makes) the best scones -although I have to redeem myself for burning my last batch intended for an office party for one of my co-workers- so I’m usually not impressed with most scones. Yet I will admit without any hesitation that the Mandarin kicked my ass in scone-making (royally).

Warning: unusual condiments!!!! The accompaniments for the scones were creme fraiche, rosepetal preserve jam and meyer lemon preserves. If you only love sweet things on your scones, these preserves are not a good match. They were barely sweet but very bright, tart and acidic to stand up to and cut the richness of the scones. I LOVED it, but they may not be for everyone.

Hubs hates egg salad, in fact you can’t get him near a boiled egg because he loathes the smell even from a half mile away- but he loved these egg salad sandwiches. Did I mention the maker was a genius? Also on the plate are curried chicken salad sandwiches, black forest ham sandwiches with horseradish mayonnaise, and cucumber sandwiches with smoked salmon.

I sacrificed my curried chicken salad sandwich to the all-mighty hubs since I was getting full, while he liked it he did mention the curry was a bit strong. The cucumber salmon sandwiches were wonderful, but believe it or not my favorite was the ham sandwich although the horseradish kick to the mayonaise was mild for my preferences (note: my horseradish tolerance is quite respectable by Slavic standards, guess what that means!).

A common complaint I have when it comes to pastry, and especially chocolate, is that it is usually made so sweet you can’t taste any flavors (this is usually done to mask the fact that the pastry has none). Whoever the pastry chef is at the Mandarin, they need to triple their salary. These petite fours were so well flavored that the chef was able to show a lot of restraint with the amount of sugar, something I really appreciate and rarely find. As good as the sandwiches and scones were, the pastry was the real star of the tea service. Hubs and I agreed, the best was the pecan tart with raspberry, a close runner up were the coconut lemon squares, next in line was the chocolate covered cheesecake lollypops, then the passion fruit meringues (note: if you’re a passion-fruit freak- I’m looking at YOU, Mom-  you must try these, the flavor was very intense) and finally the chocolate ganache tart.

They have a really wonderful variety of rare and fine teas to choose from, there’s something for everyone. I tried the pur eh tea, a kind of earthy assam and hubs enjoyed the Mandarin’s special hotel blend which I liked even better.

I won’t say much about the view from the Mandarin Tea Lounge, because I think the picture speaks for itself.