Thé à la mode

I went back to Le Bristol again for tea over the weekend, this time, for their thé à la mode -  fashion high tea. I have not heard of the designer - Avtandil Tskvitinidze and I have a hard time pronouncing or even spelling his name - but I've been intrigued by the whole concept of showcasing latest designer collections and pairing them with delectable pastries. Nevermind that it wasn't  Lagerfeld, McQueen or Mizrahi; I had to go for the experience.

Avtandil's Spring-Summer collection for 2011 was inspired by 
 the two special facets of a woman - the strong independent outside and the softer, tender, glamorous and sometimes childish inside. There are simply two levels of penetration into a woman's world - first level: independence clear for everyone and second level: transparency only for the chosen. 
Alright. I did not come up with that; I could not have. It's somewhat too abstract for my world. It came, almost verbatim, from the little black booklet that you see in the photo above.

Two sides to a woman?

I thought ballooned pleats are so last-season but I guess I'm outdated

The collection showcased a lot of muted colors - black, beige, ash-blond, and some shades of mauve. Is  black and beige the new spring-green?  Peut-être. I'm not entirely sure about black as a spring color but let's just stick to what I do know: the desserts. I thought the entire collection was very Issey Miyake-ish, and was expecting the accompanying desserts to have "pleats" - think puff pastries, viennoiseries or complex, layered desserts but this was what we were served with:

Clock-wise from bottom: vanilla pastry cream puffs coated with pearl "chouquette" sugars, pistachio macaron with pistachio cream filling, lemon tart (the crust was really hard to bite into), pistachio financier, raspberry-vanilla cream tart (again, the crust was super hard) and chocolate bon-bons (dark and milk rochers, dark chocolate candied orange and caramel-filled milk chocolate). 

We also had the usual tea sandwiches - cheese, smoked salmon, tuna and cucumber....

.....but the highlight of the dessert collection was definitely the molten cherry and milk mousse cake. A genius blend of lemon, amarena cherries, milk mousse and vanilla-tonka bean cream. The mousse had a silky texture on the inside but the outer layer had a thin, crusty texture. Paired with amarena cherry sorbet - sour and sweet, hitting all the right notes. Forget about the show - it was party in my mouth.

I didn't think the color red (amarena cherries) or round pastries (macarons, cream puffs, chocolate bon-bons) complemented the black-beige-gray fashion collection. Do you? Which one's your favorite?

Here's mine: