Afternoon Tea or High Tea?

[Sunshineismyfavourite]

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!

This post is outside my tax bracket. Who takes these thing seriously 😂😂😂

Re: the working class point. Yes, that's right.

When I was a child, we had breakfast in the morning, dinner at what most people now call lunchtime (at school we had it in the dinner hall) and our meal in the afternoon was just referred to as 'tea': maybe bacon and eggs followed by. jam sandwiches (aka 'a piece on jam') and cups of tea.

High tea growing up in Scotland was:

4-5pm, hot meal with tea and scones/cakes served afterwards.

@WearyAuldWumman same meal names with me.

Dinner was meat and 2 veg with boiled tatties followed by a milk pudding.
Tea was bacon and egg, macaroni or the dreaded liver and onions.

The only relatives in my family who had high tea were from the north of England. Neither my Scots nor the Cornish relatives ever had high tea, though they would have a cream tea as a treat.

I think that website has it slightly wrong, the difference between tea and high tea is the scones and cakes after it.

Tea is eat at home, High tea is a restaurant marketing ploy - tea with cakes and scones.

Supper and Tea are different, Supper is a protein with chips (fish Supper, sausage supper) usually taken away. A fish tea is on a plate with chip n peas!

Whats cream tea?

So I'm right in thinking there is a regional thing going on with High Tea its never found in the south.

As a child in Scotland we would go to the local hotel for a High Tea. It always included a mixed grill or a pie, as well as cake and tea.
I always thought of it as a Scottish thing, never met another one outside Scotland.

In my experience, I think you’re right. I think it’s a Northern thing.

A cream tea is scones, jam, cream and a lot of tea, along with dainty sandwiches. It replaces a mid-afternoon cuppa with a biscuit, whereas high tea replaces the need for an evening meal.

The Old bank in Callender does a traditional high tea still (scroll down!).

https://oldbankcallander.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Afternoon-Tea.pdf

Now I’m hungry!

YANBU @Sunshineismyfavourite, but what is the ‘whole cream tea debacle’ that you refer to?

That sums it up perfectly.
I'd forgotten about the bread to go with High Tea 😋

Cream tea sounds like a variant of Afternoon Tea.
Definitely different to High Tea.

A cream tea is just scones, cream, jam and tea.
Afternoon tea is dainty sandwiches, savouries, scones, jam and cream , assorted fancy cakes. Tea.

That sounds very familiar. :)

I would take that to mean they are trying to be something they’re not!

High tea low table is the name of an Irish book! But I'm guessing the saying came before the book.

High tea is what Canadians call it.

A place near us does a Gentleman's tea which I love. Mostly savoury, pork pie, sausage roll, sandwich, cup of soup, pate on toast, just delicious. I like one piece of cake and done.

Cream tea is just scones, clotted cream and jam with tea (or sometimes coffee). Nothing else. It’s a bit like coffee and cake, rather than a full afternoon tea.

Cream tea you’d have as a snack in a tea room after a windy dog walk. Afternoon tea in a fancy hotel for Mother’s Day.

The debate is whether you put jam on first and then cream on top (Cornwall), or the correct way like we do here in Devon 😂 cream first and then jam.

It’s taken very seriously. Our local councillor runs on a platform of ‘cream first’ (slightly tongue in cheek but not entirely 🤣).

High tea is lots of things on the table, pick your own. Savoury and sweet. Teddy cake, ham, tongue, pate, salad, crumpets, cake, Trifle, whatever mum had baked that week. Growing up in Cornwall we didn't call it high tea but we had it every Sunday. We called it tea. Now we call it Sunday tea but my husband always serves pizza instead of the ham, Teddy cake etc which is wrong but he's lazy.
My dad did say that when he was Growing up though they didn't have any of the savouries, it would've just been a buffet of sweet things. Don't know if that was traditional or Granny just had a sweet tooth. My parents must have modified it to make it less nutritionally dubious for us.

Oh and served at normal tea time (6 o clock).
Basically like a Boxing Day buffet tea

Thats something totally different to what the Northern and Scottish folks are thinking of a as High Tea.

Will ye take an egg with your tea?
Boiled or my favourite, poached.

I'm from Yorkshire. High tea to me is served later and is a substantial meal. And the drink is often tea (or sometimes beer). Not at all dainty.

And looking at Valerie's description, i'd say they agree.