Come for the food, stay for the luxurious experience.

How do you respond if you suffer an energy slump in the late afternoon? With a strong cup of coffee? A bar of chocolate or a can of Coke? Or perhaps something healthier like a handful of nuts and raisins? The Wolseley, a grand cafe and restaurant on London’s Piccadilly, offers a far more elaborate remedy to around 200 guests every day. Afternoon tea, which is as much a ritual as it is a meal, may have its origins in the lifestyle of Victorian aristocrats, but it seems to have a near-universal appeal.

This universality is underlined by the fact that restaurant manager Ms Linda Roduner, who’s responsible for the quality of the 1,300 teas The Wolseley serves each week, is from Australia, not a country normally known for its love of ceremony. The restaurant opened in 2003 in an Italianate building originally designed as a showroom for The Wolseley car company. Open from 7.00am until midnight every day, it has become a London institution with a clientele that spans the worlds of the media, finance, show business and the arts. Although The Wolseley is too discreet to name names, rest assured that it’s very popular with the capital’s celebrities; the late artist Mr Lucian Freud dined there most nights.

Ms Roduner has an infectious enthusiasm for the intricacies of afternoon tea, and her dedication to the quality of the food and drinks served is palpable. She explains that the invention of afternoon tea in 1840s England is credited to Ms Anna Russell, the Duchess of Bedford. The Duchess wanted something to tide herself and her guests over until dinner, which she and her fellow Victorians were eating later (at around 8.00pm) than had previously been normal in the UK.

Sitting down to tea under The Wolseley’s astonishing high ceiling, it’s hard to believe that even English duchesses ever had it this good. A three-tiered stand arrives at the table, with warm scones at the top – they’re cooked on site every afternoon and come with strawberry jam made in the kitchen by head pastry chef Mr Martin Bullough, and clotted cream from Cornwall in the southwest of England. A selection of six cakes on the middle tier, made each morning by the restaurant’s pastry chefs, and five different sandwiches at the base (smoked salmon, cucumber and cream cheese, roast beef, coronation chicken and cheddar cheese and pickle) complete the offering. Ms Roduner suggests people eat the savoury food first, then the scones, and finish with the cakes. This is washed down with a pot of tea made from loose tea leaves sourced specifically for The Wolseley.

If it’s the quantity of food that makes the first impression, it’s the quality that stays with you. The sandwiches are remarkably soft and the cakes are strikingly fresh. The fact that everything is made in-house each day means that the food is entirely different from that offered in the average coffee shop.

Of course, the drinks are equally important and Ms Roduner explains that the most popular tea choices are “English breakfast, Earl Grey or our afternoon blend which contains oolong, China black and a bit of Darjeeling, but younger visitors are more likely to order camomile, green or jasmine tea,” she says. “The baristas use filtered water and make the different teas at different temperatures; black teas at 95 degrees, jasmine at 75 degrees and green tea at 70 degrees.”

Champagne is a popular addition to the standard range of drinks and she is relaxed about the different ways people take their tea (with or without milk or sugar). “Everyone is so personal with their tea,” she says. “It’s a bit like whisky, everyone has a particular way they like to drink it and they can’t believe anyone else does it differently.”

While we’re on the subject of personal decisions, I ask Ms Roduner two potentially divisive questions relating to the baked goods: how is the word “scone” pronounced, and in what order does she apply the toppings? “I say scone [with a short vowel so that it rhymes with John, as opposed to stone], and I go for jam, then cream. I put on a generous layer of jam and then as much cream as possible.”

Afternoon tea makes no sense as a daily meal, but as an occasional indulgence, there’s little to rival it. No wonder that Ms Roduner says of its inventor, The Duchess of Bedford, “We have a lot to thank her for.”

Shop The Wolseley Collection here

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