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Bon Appétit spends a day at The Langham, London, home to England’s oldest hotel afternoon tea. Executive Pastry Chef Andrew Gravett takes us behind the scenes as his team prepares hundreds of afternoon teas, from freshly baked scones and strawberry jam to delicate sandwiches, pastries, and chocolates. See what it takes to keep a 160-year-old British tradition running inside one of London’s most historic luxury hotels every single day.
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00:01The hotel is 160 years old and obviously afternoon tea has been a big part of that history.
00:06The Grand Hotels made it a special occasion and the Langham was the first serving it in 1865.
00:11It's now viewed as something very high class.
00:13Afternoon tea was originally a meal period to kind of fill in between lunch and dinner.
00:18The pastries and sandwiches tend to be smaller because the aristocracy didn't want to get dirty whilst they socialised
00:23and it would have been dainty little portions that were eaten.
00:26Now they are still small because when people come for afternoon tea they want more flavour and variety in what
00:31they're eating.
00:32Five cakes, two scones, jams, creams.
00:35We tend to average around 120, 130 teas and we can go up to 180, 190.
00:40We're hitting 1,400, 1,500 pieces each day.
00:44The role as executive pastry chef is to get it as good as we can
00:46and what we want is that the guest leaves this hotel with a really good impression of the products that
00:51we made.
00:52It's that simple.
00:53Good morning, welcome to London.
00:55And most importantly, welcome to the Langham Hotel.
00:58My name is Andrew Gravett.
00:59I'm the executive pastry chef.
01:00It's around 7.30am and we're going to show you what we do today.
01:05So here is the original Langham's lobby.
01:07And I'm just going to walk you through some of the corridors and we'll get down to the kitchens.
01:10So through here we've got our dining room where all the breakfast will be prepared and served,
01:15taken up into the 380 or so rooms in the hotel.
01:19So we're in the smaller one of the pastry kitchens where afternoon tea is produced every day.
01:23Today there's over 100 covers for tea.
01:26Scott, Charlie, a sheep are getting ready, finalising the cakes.
01:29And there'll be another shift coming in later, around 2 to do the dinner shifts.
01:33Now we can move on to, we're going to do some chocolate amenities, so chocolate bonbons.
01:37So this is a ganache chocolate cream that's been infused with old grey tea, the specific sugar added.
01:42A layer of very fine chocolate over the top of it.
01:44In this case we're using a dark chocolate, we're melting it to above 50 degrees.
01:47Then inside there is a mechanism that basically cools the chocolate,
01:51then it will come out of the tube here, the pipe here, to around 31 degrees.
01:55So it's called a tempering process.
01:56Traditionally we would do it on a table, on a marble, but in this case when we need so much
01:59chocolate,
02:00the machine helps us and saves us a lot of time in doing that.
02:03What we've done here in the machine, we've melted the chocolate completely,
02:06so we've broken the temper.
02:07And what will happen in the cooling and the reheating process,
02:10we're realigning the cocoa butter crystals so that when we finish the chocolate,
02:14we're able to pick it up, it has a slight shine to it and it should have a snap to
02:18it.
02:18So they're ready now, they're going to go through this tunnel of chocolate which is going to coat them.
02:22There's a fan just blowing the excess chocolate off the top and then it will come onto this mat.
02:26Charlie's going to decorate them with the cornflour, the chocolate will set and then tomorrow ready to go.
02:30We're using a manjari chocolate, it's cocoa beans from Madagascar.
02:34They have a very fruity, acidic flavour.
02:36So you see these little blue flowers going through the tea.
02:38We know this is an Algue chocolate because we could have four or five different varieties and it's just a
02:42nice decoration.
02:43For a batch of 220, probably in about 10 minutes, the machine is gone.
02:48It's a technique that gives consistency because the coating is always the same
02:51and it also means that two people in an hour can probably dip 1,500, 2,000 chocolates.
02:58Charlie's going to finish these off.
02:59We're going to head into the bigger pastry kitchen to finish and finalise the pastries
03:04that we're going to be doing for the Christmas afternoon tea.
03:09So the palm court originally used to have a glass roof and the cakes we wanted to go with a
03:14design
03:15that was as white as possible, resembling the snow outside of a winter garden.
03:18And then the idea was inside the cakes we would have fruit or products that you would grow in a
03:24Victorian glass house.
03:25So we've got a bowl of egg whites that we're going to whisk and this is going to make a
03:28super light sponge
03:30for the roll that we're going to be doing.
03:32The aeration just makes a light, slightly unctuous sponge.
03:35The French have a recipe, it's called a long dishart, a cat's tongue.
03:38So in here we've done that mix.
03:40We've melted butter, we've added the icing sugar, we've added the flour, the egg whites
03:44and it just gives us this kind of pasty texture.
03:47Traditionally, if you bake this, it will give you a very crunchy texture on its own
03:50but we're going to spread this onto the mat and then we're going to add the sponge mix onto it.
03:54The sponge on its own would just give a caramelised colour on the outside
03:58so by adding this tool we'll have something that's super white when it bakes.
04:02And certainly through Christmas we'll be making 180, 200 of these cakes.
04:06In this recipe we have eggs, inverted sugar, there's also oil in here.
04:11The oil will give you the soft texture in the cake but in the baking process because it's oil there's
04:14no evaporation.
04:15Then we've got corn flour and ginger.
04:18We've taken out normal wheat flour, it's going to help us when we've got the gluten-free allergies.
04:22So that just needs to be sieved to get any lumps out.
04:24So then the egg whites now are going to be ready.
04:28As you can see there it's very elastic, it's quite springy.
04:32We're going to take a part of the mixture out, we're going to put it into the egg yolk and
04:35sugar mix
04:36and we're just going to whisk it.
04:38We fold everything in one go rather than doing it in two goes.
04:41So that's that in and then we're just going to add this at the same time and we'll fold.
04:46So this is the frozen tool mix that we spread on earlier
04:49and we're just going to weigh on the sponge that we put in
04:51and like that we should guarantee that every time our rolls are going to be the same thickness,
04:56same flavour, same amount of love.
04:59Okay, and then we spread it.
05:00We've worked out now that the thickness of the 230 grams,
05:04if it's evenly spread over the mat, will give us the thickness that we want.
05:07Okay, so that's going to bake in the oven now.
05:11160, 8 minutes, we've just reduced the fan slightly there and off we go, simple.
05:17This is now, we're going to make the plum compote.
05:19So this is for me the main part of the dessert.
05:21They're called watermelon plums because they have a kind of a watermelony skin,
05:26kind of a crunchy texture as when you bite into a really fresh watermelon
05:29and they're just actually super sweet and super nice.
05:32The products that we're using in our cakes are products that would have been grown in those glass houses.
05:36If we can revert back to Victorian ideas, but making them in modern ways, then we will try and do
05:43that.
05:44Here we have a plum puree that we've made.
05:46So we've just cooked down plums, we've blended them super smooth
05:49and then into that we're going to add the fresh plum that we've just chopped up.
05:53So then we have a texture of a crunchiness.
05:55So here we're going to add a mix of sugar and pectin.
05:57It helps to stabilize and it will set this as a jelly in our mold.
06:01We've mixed it with sugar so like that the pectin dissolves much quicker.
06:05So the sponge here, you can see, is caramelized on this side, so that color is there.
06:09And now we're going to demold it and hope that it's going to be white underneath.
06:14There we go. Wonderful.
06:15So we're going to pour our plum compote in here.
06:17We want that diameter of plum of the compote in there.
06:20And then a quick tap to get all the air out.
06:23And then that's going to go next door at minus 30.
06:25We've just got a very light ginger syrup.
06:28It just gives us an extra strength of ginger in the cake.
06:31Then a very, very thin layer of the cream.
06:35I think the technique is how much butter I would normally put on my cucumber sandwich.
06:38There we are. There's the idea.
06:39That's the strict rule.
06:41Then it's super simple and the roll helps us here.
06:44It's because it's already got the shape that we want.
06:47There's the parchment just to wrap it.
06:50Then we just use the tray and that's rolled.
06:53We're going to freeze it.
06:55So that gets put into the freezer.
06:56So we should get nine to ten portions in it.
06:59It's about 9.30.
07:00It's time to go and do some meetings with the pastry chefs.
07:06The team have been in here for an hour and we're just going to catch up.
07:09So in the team we've got Bridget, who's a sous chef,
07:11who looks after daily production in both kitchens.
07:14We've got Oscar, who's our youngest member of the team,
07:17we're an apprentice, fantastic colleague over here at Ashik,
07:20who Charlie enjoys winding up.
07:21Charlie's CDP's got one of our commies, the better looking of us all.
07:25Leki and I, we've worked together for nearly 10 years.
07:27Sometimes we're like, auntie and uncle.
07:31So this is the sheet that we would receive every day.
07:32We see if there are any VIPs.
07:34Very importantly for us, it's about the allergens, the dietary needs.
07:37So Charlie today and Ashik, they'll be looking after afternoon tea.
07:40They will take that dietary sheet.
07:41We've got around 100 covers today.
07:44We've got a nut allergy at two,
07:46fish allergy at two o'clock.
07:47A couple of vegetarians, we need to check with gelatin for that.
07:50The guests don't always tell us what they have as an allergy.
07:53So we run two teas.
07:54We have a normal tea that we can put every ingredient that we want in
07:57and not worry about it.
07:58And then we do a tea that will be identical in presentation.
08:01It will be used for vegan guests, gluten-free guests,
08:04nut-free guests, halal guests.
08:06That tea should be able to cover that.
08:07Then if we have guests who have something extra,
08:09there might be a cake that we have to make on the spot for that guest.
08:12Lech, what's the cream in there?
08:15Lech and Bridget are going to be working here.
08:17They'll make a plan on what they're going to be doing in this kitchen.
08:20And between Bridget and I, we'll be checking, making sure that both kitchens are working well.
08:24I'll be predominantly in this kitchen getting stuff done.
08:27We're doing 150, are we?
08:29Yes.
08:30It will depend day to day who is working, who is running the different kitchens.
08:34We have our 100 or so cupboards and have a wonderful day.
08:39We're going to move on to making the jam.
08:41This is a strawberry jam that we'll be making for the surfer affinity.
08:45We're going to jar it, label it.
08:46It's kind of a staple and it's a product that we sell throughout the hotel.
08:50So the strawberries are going to get chopped.
08:52The ideal time of year for strawberries in England is just at the end of May, June.
08:56So it's probably four or five weeks, ideally, that we should be eating strawberries.
09:00This year we worked with a farm in Kent and used their strawberries for all of our jams and our
09:04strawberry products.
09:05So we were getting the best British fruit just for those five weeks from them.
09:09And you really saw a difference in the product.
09:12Strawberry just has to be on there.
09:13We tried to take it off and guests have just said, no, you keep the strawberry on.
09:18So there are certain things that guests will expect and strawberry jam is one of those.
09:23We've got the strawberries chopped.
09:25We've got the sugar, the glucose in here.
09:27We've got the citric acid.
09:28We've got the pectin.
09:29The water in.
09:31And we're going to make a syrup.
09:32So there's glucose and sugar.
09:33The pan is at 160 degrees.
09:35That's why it's boiling straight away.
09:37We're just going to dissolve the sugar, the glucose in the water,
09:39which gives us the right density before we add the fruit into it.
09:42By cooking a syrup beforehand rather than adding all the fruit in at the same time,
09:46it means that it will also help in the speed of the fruit actually cooking.
09:50The strawberries go in.
09:52The moisture is going to come out of the strawberry.
09:54So it's still thick and you're going to see very quickly it will loosen up.
10:00So what we want to see now is the percentage of sugar.
10:03And we're going to use the refractometer and we'll check that we're at 62 bricks,
10:07which means 62 grams of sugar per 100 gram of mix.
10:11So the jam is ready.
10:13We're going to start to tip it out into our container.
10:17We add the acid as well.
10:21There we go.
10:23And there's the jam.
10:24We're going to go back and we're going to jar the jam.
10:27The jars are hot from the oven and they're at 120 degrees so they're sterilized.
10:30Then it doesn't look nice in a jam jar or on a jam if you've got the white foam.
10:35And we're just going to fill them like that.
10:37And you leave a gap above.
10:40Traditionally, my mom, she would do that.
10:42What happens is the air gap that you had at the top is now at the bottom,
10:46but it means that the air has run through the jam.
10:48So it's pasteurized through the heat of the jam.
10:50And then they would turn it back.
10:51But for us, we don't want to have that jam on the lid.
10:54When you open the jam, this one you can see the lid has got jam on it.
10:59Our ones, they won't have the jam on it.
11:01It's a simple little thing.
11:02And then we'll put them in the oven in the steamer for about 20 minutes.
11:05And that's it.
11:06The jam is done.
11:08So now we're going to make the scones.
11:10So every day we're working a day in advance.
11:12What we've also done the day before is we've made, we call it our crumble.
11:15This mix gives us a fine crumb.
11:17Then when we add the liquid in, we're going to work it hard
11:20so that we start to get the gluten elastic.
11:23When we cook these scones, they should give us something that is
11:25as tall as the thickness that we cut it.
11:27It holds in that high texture.
11:29But inside, it's going to be a really fine, almost like a cake texture, rather than a bread texture.
11:34So as the dough is done, we find that kneading by hand we get the elasticity.
11:39And then there's two of us, because I'm getting old, so I need help, so Charlie's going to help us
11:44with it.
11:44I think that without the machine that we have, it's almost too aggressive, so it rips the gluten rather than
11:49keeps the elasticity.
11:50And our hands, as soft and tender as Charlie and I's hands are, we just get the right elasticity in
11:55the scones.
11:56We cook kind of 9, 10 in the morning, so they're almost still warm when they're going up for the
12:00service.
12:01For me, the scone is a utensil that is used to serve the cream and the jam.
12:05If we can make the texture nice that gives a good blend with the cream and the jam, then people
12:09don't want anything else.
12:10Right. You see that when you push into it, there's a bit of elasticity.
12:13So we're going to put it on the rolling machine, so that it's level, that we're ready to set it
12:17onto the tray, and we're going to fridge it before we cut it.
12:19The butter hardens again, so it gives us a really clean cut when we're going to cut them.
12:22So then we're going to put them in the fridge.
12:24Dough will harden up, and then we'll cut them, and ready for baking for tomorrow.
12:29We've baked a couple of trays.
12:31So what we want is that they're white on the edge, so these are the raisin versions, so the basic
12:37dough with raisins added.
12:39There we go.
12:39They're quite small, the scones, but we like that size, and I think it's probably we can offer more to
12:43the guests rather than just having a big, big scone.
12:45And they've just got this breakability.
12:47They hold together.
12:48They're moist inside and super light, super nice, actually.
12:52We leave them to cool on the rack, and then these will be put into trays, and they go upstairs
12:56into a warming oven, and so they get them just slightly warm.
12:59It's about 11 now.
13:00So we're going to see Roldan, a fantastic sandwich maker, in our palm court kitchen.
13:07So this is Roldan.
13:08He's our sandwich man.
13:10Today he'll be making over a thousand sandwiches for the guests.
13:13He's in at 7, 7.30, so he does all the prep in the morning, and then afterwards it will
13:17be all the fillings, etc., and he'll get them done for the next day.
13:20The sandwiches tend to be quite traditional in flavors.
13:23The cucumber is infused with champagne.
13:25The salmon we're serving with fennel.
13:27The chicken currently I think is a coronation one.
13:29The bread, as you can see, it's long slices.
13:32We can build in here about 9 to 10 sandwiches.
13:36So it will be the salmon, the fennel, a topping, and then Roldan will get his tool.
13:40He'll slice the sandwiches into the 9, 10 portions.
13:42How long have you been here, Roldan?
13:4311.
13:4411 years, cutting sandwiches every day.
13:46I don't think Roldan needs this one.
13:47His sandwiches are pretty perfect most of the time without.
13:51So here is a batch of the chicken.
13:53So it's on a paprika bread.
13:55Rocket, peppers, super tasty.
13:57And as you can see, he's built all his layers of sandwiches, and these, once he's built everything up on
14:02the tray like this, then it will be all sliced.
14:04So he works kind of a factory way.
14:06Damp cloths over them so that they don't dry out, and then he'll cut everything, trim everything, box it, and
14:11they'll be stored in the fridge.
14:13So it's funny, it's in theory a really simple thing, but it's all about the pressure you put on with
14:16his handle, and he's holding it down, the pressure with the knife, etc.
14:19But he gets a really clean cut in his sandwiches.
14:21He can do anything fancy, but give me cucumber every time.
14:23And when I come up here very often, come to annoy Roldan, I ask him, have you got a new
14:27cucumber recipe?
14:28And I just eat cucumber.
14:30There we go.
14:30Roldan's obviously on his way to getting the sandwiches done.
14:33I'm going to have a cucumber sandwich.
14:34We're going to go to the kitchens.
14:38Now we're going to make, it's a Langan bear.
14:40It's an amenity that we make for a lot of guests.
14:43Sometimes it will be for every single room.
14:44Sometimes it will be for one particular guest.
14:47In this case, we're going to turn it into a Santa bear.
14:49We did it earlier with the chocolate machine was tempering the chocolate for us.
14:52For the bear, we're just going to make a small batch, so I'm going to temper it by hand.
14:55So the chocolate is being cooled onto the table.
14:57We've melted it above 45 degrees.
14:59And then by continually moving it on the table, we are going to be cooling it down.
15:05At the beginning, you make a mess.
15:06Your apron, your table are covered in chocolate when you're finished.
15:09And the more that you do it, the better and the tighter you become at it.
15:12So this is granite.
15:14Basically, the heat of the chocolate on here will be distributed through the granite.
15:17And then I've left a little bit of the chocolate in the bowl so that it will just warm back
15:21up to between 28, 29 degrees.
15:24And that's the temperature for then being able to pour it into our molds.
15:27So we want to get the air out, the excess will drop off.
15:30And this one, we're going to put two layers on.
15:31We just leave the excess chocolate to drain there.
15:34Well, the bear now, you know, we've had it long enough where we do have guests asking,
15:37can we have another bear this year when they come back?
15:39For the children at the hotel, very often they'll be given a bear.
15:42And so that's where the initial thought came from.
15:45It's kind of that memory of when you're young.
15:47I think a lot of people can associate with having a teddy bear.
15:49This has been setting now for about a couple of hours.
15:52So we're just going to demold it.
15:53I'm going to see if it demolds.
15:55Hopefully it will.
15:56This is the warming table.
15:57It will melt just the edges of the chocolate so that it enables us to stick them together.
16:01So there the bear's stuck now.
16:02We'll just melt the feet and then that sticks into the staircase.
16:07So then you've got the base of the bear is made.
16:10What we've done here, we spray white chocolate with a compressor gun.
16:14We spray it onto the staircase.
16:16So it gives you that kind of snow effect for Christmas.
16:18The bear body has been sprayed with a red colored chocolate.
16:21So it's going to be the base of the Santa Claus suit.
16:24And then here we've got just little attachments and hopefully it will come alive and look
16:28like Father Christmas.
16:29Right, Bridget, you're going to come and do this.
16:30Bridget is the designer of the Christmas bear.
16:33It's going to be stuck with the tempered chocolates.
16:34We call it plastic chocolate.
16:35So it's a mix of chocolate and glucose melted together, left to set.
16:38And it gives us this malleable texture that we can shape into how we want, what we want and where
16:43we want.
16:43Before Christmas, I would imagine the beginning of December, we're going to have 300, nearly 400 lined up.
16:48And we'll be doing this process to all of them.
16:50It will look like a factory line and it's all the tables we've covered in bears.
16:54So whilst Bridget is finishing this off, it's going to be ready for a room that we'll take up to
16:57later.
16:59Chris is in charge of the in-room dining department.
17:01We're just trying out how the amenities are going to look for Christmas in the suite.
17:04Just to see that he's happy and we're going to go off, Chris will continue his day.
17:12So this is Stefan, our managing director in the hotel, coming to check on us, walking around the corridors.
17:16I'm behaving today, Stefan.
17:18Thank you very much, Andrew.
17:19I'm delighted to have you here today.
17:21This is Alberto.
17:22He's our window cleaner in the hotel.
17:24So he cleans, well, if there's 380 rooms plus the restaurants, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, guess how many rooms
17:30he cleans in a day.
17:32A lot.
17:32The happiest man in the hotel.
17:34So we're going to go now to the palm court kitchen where the chefs are just preparing, tasting for one
17:38of the saviour dishes for Christmas.
17:42Yanis is the executive chef of the hotel.
17:43And funnily enough, we used to work with each other 20 years ago.
17:46We were young, we were beautiful.
17:47He was.
17:48I was.
17:49Yanis will come and say something sweet, give his opinions, and we kind of bounce off each other at times.
17:54It's a good, simple dish with really good ingredients.
17:56Our main course could be super rich.
17:58Then we'll tone down and we'll freshen up in the dessert to try and get it that it balances.
18:02And people are feeling comfortable when they walk out, but having eaten something really nice.
18:11It's about four o'clock.
18:12We're just going to get ready.
18:14Just the final kind of presentation of a dessert that we'll be doing for Christmas.
18:17So in here is egg sugar yuzu juice, and this is just going to be brought to around 85 degrees.
18:23It is as simple as, does it taste nice?
18:25Does it look as we want it to look?
18:26But most importantly, does it taste nice?
18:27Does it got the right textures?
18:28Creaminess, it just, it can vary throughout, you know, whatever we're making at the time.
18:32So just a quick blending, it smooths the cream.
18:36There we are, and done.
18:38We'll push a cling film against it so when it goes in the fridge there's no skin on top of
18:42it.
18:43So it's fun for three days.
18:44So this is, it's called a whipped ganache.
18:46White chocolate, cream, Madagascan vanilla that we blitzed into the cream.
18:49We've boiled that with a glucose and an inverted sugar.
18:52We then add cold liquid cream into that mix.
18:55And after a few hours of being in the fridge, it gives us a texture like that.
18:58So here's the meringue, we've made sure there was an indent inside this, the yuzu will just sit in it.
19:04We use that just to stick it so it's not going to side on the plate.
19:06So then the yuzu cream goes in the indent, a quick smooth over.
19:11The whipped ganache again in another piping bag.
19:13So this will just pipe on like that.
19:16Then we have, these are just little confit lime zest.
19:19So they've just been put in a very light syrup, glucose, sugar and lime juice.
19:23So these are lime segments, fresh lime segments.
19:26A bit of the lime zest, then little white chocolate decorations.
19:30They match the whipped ganache.
19:32And what we want is that the dessert appears to be super airy.
19:35So there's very light decorations on it.
19:37Then just a little bit of meringue crumb.
19:39So sorbet's going to go onto that.
19:41And that's it, dessert done.
19:43Enjoy.
19:45Thanks for joining us at the Langham.
19:47It's been lots of fun.
19:48We've got a busy service to do for tonight.
19:50We've got some events and a service in the restaurant.
19:52So some of us have to work.
19:53Thank you very much.
19:54Have a great evening and enjoy.