Introduction

So, today I’m having afternoon tea at the Zürich Park Hyatt. I’ve been meaning to try this one for a long time. Zürich is, admittedly, not one of my favourite cities – mainly because I find it obnoxiously ostentatious and pretentious. But I will admit they have some good places for afternoon tea.

Location

The Park Hyatt is located on a quiet street up near the lake and just a short walk from the infamous Bahnhostrasse with its glitzy shops. I’m not sure how many rooms the hotel has, but the building isn’t really that big.

The afternoon tea is served in the lobby, opposite reception and the concierge’s desk. In the far corner they’ve already set up the Christmas tree.

The style of the hotel is mundane and reminds me a lot of what you typically find in many of the upscale Tokyo hotels, which tend to use a lot of dark wood paneling.

As luck would have, my table is situated right next to the lit fire place, which is nice, because the temperature outside has dropped and is currently hovering somewhere around the freezing point. In any case, the table is simply but neatly set for two.

The Afternoon Tea

The waitress arrives and asks us if we‘d like to see the menu for the teas. But we tell her there‘s no need, as we‘re both going with the Earl Grey.

The food arrives on several dishes. First, there are two fruit skewers and two marshmallows for dipping into a small pot of delicious melted hot chocolate.

Then there is a three-tier étagère. As we ordered one vegetarian and one standard afternoon tea, they have put the vegetarian savouries on the top tier, the non-vegetarian ones on the bottom tier and the sweets in the middle.

The scones are served on a separate plate and there are three scones each. There is a choice of plain scones and dried fruit scones. They are served with whipped cream, berry jam, and a lemon and passion fruit curd.

Conclusion

The food is very nice, and there‘s a lot of it. All in all, though, I don’t think it‘s quite as good as the afternoon tea I recently had in Lausanne on my way back from Verbier to Basel. However, what the Park Hyatt certainly has going for it is its staff and the atmosphere in the lobby. The staff were very friendly and attentive, and the lobby felt rather comfortable, a bit as though you were sitting in somebody’s comfortable living room.

From the Park Hyatt it‘s just a short walk to Enge railway station. Enge was originally penned to become the first new station on what should have been Zürich‘s subway system. The subway eventually didn‘t materialize, and so Enge was converted to a railway station on a suburban branch line. It‘s about six minutes to the main railway station.