On a quiet stretch of the Thames corridor in southwest London, the Richmond Hill Hotel afternoon tea has been voted the finest in the capital, beating nearly half a million competing votes cast by readers of lifestyle publication Muddy Stilettos as part of its Muddy Awards 2026.
It is a result that will raise an eyebrow or two among London’s tea-drinking establishment. The capital has no shortage of celebrated rooms in which to spend an afternoon with a pot and a tiered stand: Sketch, Fortnum & Mason, a dozen grand hotel lobbies with their polished silver and rustling broadsheets. Yet the Richmond Hill Hotel, tucked away from the central London fray, has taken the top spot.
What sets the Richmond Hill Hotel afternoon tea apart
The teas are served in the hotel’s award-winning 144 On The Hill restaurant, a room with an outlook that already does much of the heavy lifting before a single scone arrives. What arrives once you sit down, though, is far from conventional.
There are two distinct options, each priced at £46 per person. The ‘Enchanted Treehouse Afternoon Tea’ draws its inspiration from Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, which gives the kitchen licence to do something rather more interesting than the standard egg sandwich. Expect chicken mousse with tarragon and celery in a charcoal tartlet alongside fig frangipane with mascarpone cream. The familiar notes are still present: egg mayo on spinach bread, lemon meringue tart, the reassuring architecture of a classic afternoon tea, but rearranged into something with a story behind it.
The second option is for those who find the sweet half of any tasting menu an obligation rather than a pleasure. The savoury afternoon tea dispenses with the cakes entirely, replacing them with ham hock and pea croquettes, spicy sticky cauliflower bites and sweet and smoky chicken tenders. In place of scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam, caramelised onion and rosemary scones arrive with black garlic hummus, which sounds like a considerable improvement on the original.
The tea list and the extras worth knowing about
Whichever direction you take, the loose-leaf tea selection is a serious one. The list moves well beyond the usual English breakfast, offering Chinese lapsang souchong, Rwandan virunga and Taiwanese oolong among its options, which rewards a little time spent choosing before the food arrives.
For those who prefer something stronger alongside the proceedings, a glass of champagne or a gin cocktail can be added for £10, or a glass of English sparkling rosé for £12 more. Neither is compulsory, but then neither is easy to resist when the afternoon is going well.
The competition was formidable. The Richmond Hill Hotel’s winning entry was assessed against a strong field of finalists that included Fortnum & Mason and Sketch, both of which hold their own places on other guides to London’s best afternoon teas.
The Muddy Awards 2026 tally of nearly half a million reader votes gives the result a weight that a panel of judges alone rarely commands. Readers who know their lapsang from their oolong, and who have presumably worked their way through a great many tiered stands to get here, placed the Richmond Hill Hotel afternoon tea above the lot. For anyone planning a southwest London afternoon with purpose, Richmond Hill Hotel and its 144 On The Hill restaurant are now the obvious place to start.