The musician, actor, artist and internet visionary David Bowie, who died ten years ago this month, has inspired many tributes, ranging from the sincere to the baffling: if you’ve seen a poorly designed ‘Ziggy 4Ever’ T-shirt in recent weeks, you’ll know that some people have jumped on a bandwagon that is less about honouring the late, great superstar and more about trying to make a quick buck out of his memory.
As someone who has published a recent biography of Bowie, concentrating on the previously less heralded second half of his life and career – Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie – I am acutely aware that charges of exploiting the Bowie brand could be levelled at anyone who is not taking his achievements and accomplishments seriously. So why is the Café Royal’s afternoon tea so gloriously redolent of the great man?
Well, for a start, the Café Royal in Piccadilly has a proper link to Bowie, being the place where Bowie threw a ‘Last Supper’ on 3 July 1973 to commemorate the retirement of his Ziggy Stardust character. It was a thoroughly star-studded affair, playing host to various Beatles and Rolling Stones, and so, just over half a century later, inveterate Bowie fans can head into the Café Royal’s sumptuously appointed Grill Room for what the publicity breathlessly calls “a celebration of flavour, fantasy and flairs”. In other words, this is the Café Royal’s signature afternoon tea, but souped up with a Bowie twist. The stuff of legend, frankly.
If the food and drink weren’t up to snuff, then this would be a bandwagon-jumper par diabilisme, but thankfully this is a really excellent treat from start to finish. There are lots of nice touches, from the opportunity to have a glass of Veuve (my choice) or the non-alcoholic sparkling Wild Idol (Larry’s option, given he’s doing dry January), and then the usual sandwiches-scones-cakes all have a Bowie theme, which is neatly rather than intrusively done. The pastrami and gherkin sandwich is known as ‘the Berlin Years’, after the period that produced such masterpieces as Low and ‘Heroes’, and the cucumber and cream cheese option is, naturally, ‘the Thin White Duke’.
And this sense of fun lasts into the scones – plain and raisin, served with really fine clotted cream and a choice of strawberry and plum jam, and embossed with Bowie’s Ziggy-era face – and the miniature cakes, where the ‘lemon static’ comes complete with Aladdin Sane lightning bolt, and where, for true trivia nerds, the ‘Midnight Orange’ cake comes with the same black and white striped design as Bowie’s famous Kansai Yamamoto-masterminded ‘Tokyo Pop’ jumpsuit, which he wore on stage in the Seventies.
The selection of teas is peerless – Larry opts for one of the Bowie-approved green tea options, the ‘Dragon’s Well’, while I go for the delectable ‘White Apricot’ variety – and the whole affair is given a bit more of a Bowie twist by having the pianist play surprisingly excellent versions of such songs as ‘Let’s Dance’, ‘Space Oddity’ and of course ‘Life on Mars’.
It was most certainly not a god-awful small affair at the Grill Room, though, and Larry and I left thoroughly sated and satisfied by this particular treat. ‘Bowie would have loved it’, Larry said as we headed out, and it was all I could do not to conduct a séance there and then and ask the great man’s spirit for his opinion. Chances are, he’d have agreed.
The David Bowie Afternoon Tea at Café Royal Grill is available now to the middle of February. Further details and booking information can be found here.
Alexander Larman’s Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie (New Modern, £25) is available now in Waterstones.
