Beatons Tearooms, Crowthorne

241 High Street, Crowthorne, Berkshire, RG45 7AH

15 June 2019

SCONES
The Beatons Cream Tea boasts a choice of two home-made scones, either cheese or sweet (or one of each). Their website even suggests they also have gluten free scones. To be honest, the thought of a cream tea with cheese scones, left us mildly perturbed, so we were not disappointed when the waiter failed to ask which variety we wanted. The two plain, warmed, suger-dusted scones were perfectly nice, but (and this is a BIG but), they arrived already cut in half! Thankfully, this has only happened to us twice in the 100+ cream teas we’ve reviewed for this site. Surely, some of the pleasure of the cream tea experience, is derived from breaking apart (apparently the ‘correct’ method), or cutting and loading the scones in your preferred order and proportion? Is that just us?

CREAM
The Cornish clotted cream came in a small white dish. We really should have asked for some more, as it was just short of being enough for the size of the four scone halves.

JAM
The strawberry jam was served in a matching dish to the cream, but again, we could have really done with a little more.

TEA
The choice of teas is where Beatons Tearooms excels! The loose-leaf tea menu boasts a wonderful selection of very tempting black, oolong, green, white, red, fruit and herbal varieties. For the purpose of review consistency, we chose our favourite Lapsang Souchong and we were not disappointed. The delicious smoky aroma was not too overpowering, leaving a fresh, light, slightly fruity flavour.

AMBIENCE & SERVICE
We really liked the personalised logo china at Beatons, although we did have to ask for a replacement cup which was chipped and not 100% clean.
The two waiters were very polite and helpful.

SCORE: 7/10 ~ Good