Afternoon Tea or High Tea?

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A hotel I visit sometimes is currently advertising a 'High Tea' for Mother's Day. The menu is sandwiches, quiche, scones and cakes. But that's not 'High Tea' is it? That is an 'Afternoon Tea'. A high tea where I come from is a late afternoon meal like a 'proper' dinner - meat, veg, potatoes etc. of some description.

The hotel do brand themselves as being a bit top tier. It irritates me that they are calling it a 'High Tea' as if they are being too posh to do an afternoon tea or something. And don't get me started on the whole 'cream tea' debacle!

YANBU - it's afternoon tea - they are unreasonable to call it a high tea.
YABU - it's a high tea/who cares what they are calling it!

It's high tea because of the quiche.

Afternoon tea is all sweet apart from the sandwiches.

High tea was always hot in my experience perhaps cheese on toast, I suspect the quiche would count

Isn’t a High Tea basically an afternoon tea with a few savoury extras?

I’ve only ever heard of tea (as in your evening meal) or afternoon tea (little sandwiches and scones on a silver tray). Never heard of high tea.

High tea should have generous slices of ham carved off the bone by a jolly farmer's wife in an Enid Blyton book. Doesn't need to be hot though.

Not always. There's a lovely cafe near me that does afternoon tea and they include other savoury things like sausage rolls, wee savoury tarts and so on.

High tea usually includes a hot meal plus bread, butter tea and cake. It's usually served later than afternoon tea.

High tea is a meat tea, a fairly substantial evening meal for people who have their dinner in the middle of the day. But the term is often misused by people who think it’s a grander version of afternoon tea.

The hotel do brand themselves as being a bit top tier. It irritates me that they are calling it a 'High Tea' as if they are being too posh to do an afternoon tea or something.

This confuses me because I see it the other way around. Afternoon Tea is a kind of glorified/ritualised snack in the late afternoon and historically people who had it as an "occasion" were able to do so because they had leisure time during what would normally be the work day. It was often served away from the table, as it wasn't an essential meal. It was originally associated with aristocracy or at least people with money/means. High Tea - so called because it was served as a formal meal at the table and was eaten there, not lounging around - is an evening meal, after work and originally associated with the working class or at least professional jobholders.

Yes, the place we like to go does the usual Afternoon Tea and also High Tea, which is the AT with the addition of quiche and sausage rolls, you don't need to eat the following day at all!

It's not a case of being grander, it's a term used for two different things. Some places do High Tea which is a full meal but served earlier than dinner, other places use the same term for Afternoon tea with some savoury additions.

Americans often call afternoon tea high tea (I think they think high society or some such) so hotels that cater to US tourists often do this bollocks misnaming.

High tea just sounds really pretentious and wanky. I had never heard of it then saw it was what they called kids tea at a smart hotel

No, it’s a different thing. High tea was the meal the factory/farm workers had after the working day, it’s a hot meal, not sandwiches.

patisserie-valerie.co.uk/blogs/recipes/what-s-the-difference-between-afternoon-tea-and-high-tea

Anything goes now....afternoon tea isnt what it used to be.

Thanks, I never knew that!

Afternoon tea seems random these days. Too much emphasis and little cakes and that and not enough scones. Maybe a slice of scotch egg or even pork pie.

When I was a child in Scotland in the 1970s High Tea was a meal where you would have something like fish and chips, ham and chips, omelette, possibly a salad (but a Scottish salad - ham, lettuce, tomato etc and of course chips). It would be served with bread and butter and a pot of tea. Once that course was finished the cake stand would arrive with scones and / or Scotch pancakes, butter and jam (scones were not served with cream when I was wee), and a selection of cakes. I liked a chocolate eclair with real cream while for some reason my brother liked a cake with synthetic cream on top.
i have tried to find this version of a ‘proper’ high tea over the past few years but it seems to have disappeared.

That sounds like afternoon tea with added quiche.

Perhaps a simple rule is that if it can all be served on a three tier cake stand it’s afternoon tea? So little slices of quiche would be ok. A big snack so you can have dinner late.

OTOH if quiche was involved in a high tea, well it’d be flan and it would be served with salad or veg and new potatoes …knife and fork food not finger food.

I thought High Tea was what Mallory Towers girls might get after a Saturday spent playing hockey and larking about in the swimming hole and scrambling over the cliffs. A quick google tells me it's a working class meal with a substantial hot dish, bread and a pot of tea. I don't think a quiche cuts it as a substantial hot dish tbh, so your hotel is advertising their repast under false pretences.

In Scotland High Tea was something like fish and chips /scrambled eggs on toast / sardines on toast plus scones, sandwiches and cakes. More substantial than just afternoon tea but eaten earlier than dinner.

It’s not pretentious at all! The opposite, in fact. It was a substantial meal eaten by kids (who didn’t stay up to late dinner) and people who ate dinner in the middle of the day, whereas afternoon tea was a snack to keep people who lunched lightly (ie not manual workers) going till a late dinner.

Yes, which is what I said. Hotels often misuse the term, because they think it’s a ‘grander’ afternoon tea.

For me, High Tea would include toasted teacakes or crumpets, something hot with butter and jam.

Yes, thank you for saying this.

We used to go for High Tea when we went on bus tours in the summer holidays, and it was always a substantial meal. I recall that, in the '70s, orange juice or tomato juice would often be offered as a starter.

This is pretty much what I remember:

https://must-see-scotland.com/scottish-high-tea