The Peninsula Hong Kong

The Peninsula Hong Kong is the grande dame of Asia and its Lobby afternoon tea, with a string quartet on the balcony and a queue that takes no reservations, is the most famous four o’clock east of London.

The Peninsula opened on Kowloon’s waterfront in 1928 with a fleet of Rolls-Royces and a lobby of gilded columns that has served afternoon tea ever since. The Lobby tea comes on a three-tier stand with scones, finger sandwiches and pastries, a string quartet plays from the balcony, and the hotel refuses to take reservations: the queue on the Salisbury Road side is part of the ritual and moves in two sittings. The pastry kitchen also produces the Peninsula mooncakes, the egg custard version that started an annual sell-out in the 1980s, and the Peninsula Boutique & Café sells cakes, chocolates and the XO sauce.

The Peninsula Hong Kong is the root of the whole Peninsula tea tradition from Paris to Tokyo; taking tea here is taking it at the source.