Restaurant review, The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon London.

High tea – there's a thoroughly English concept. Not quite tea and not quite supper, a collision of sweet and savoury flavours, a repast based on "the cup that cheers but does not intoxicate" but with the possibility that the tea will be laced with rum.

It was well established by the mid-19th century, and was more associated with the north than the south of England. Arnold Bennett, in one of his Staffordshire 'Five Towns' novels, describes "a high tea of the last richness and excellence, exquisitely gracious to the palate, but ruthless in its demands on the stomach ... hot pikelets, hot crumpets, hot toast, sardines with tomatoes, raisin bread, currant bread, seed cake, lettuce, homemade marmalade and homemade hams...". It's cognate with the 'tea' that working-class labourers wolfed down on coming home from work – though when it was introduced to the Home Counties, the savoury components became more delicate than their northern equivalents.

Fortnum's, the Queen's grocer's shop, has been dishing out tea to paying customers since 1707 and has turned the afternoon ritual into a posh and pricey business. The fourth floor, fine-dining area, christened the St James Restaurant when it opened in 1957 (F&M's 250th anniversary) was tarted up for this year's royal celebrations, renamed the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, and opened by Her Maj in March.

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