The Royal Pavilion Tearoom

From what I can tell, the tearoom in the Royal Pavilion has been re-​done in recent years, although this was my first visit. The tables were dark with plush purple chairs. The walls were a rich colour, yet light and airy. The outer balcony looked like quite a nice place to sit and look out over the grounds of the Pavilion. However it was a bit chilly when my friend and I went, so we stayed inside.
Admission is only available through the Brighton Pavilion museum itself, but for a local a visit comes to about £5 if you prove residence and get the discount for booking online. Obviously not somewhere you’d just pop into, but if you’re looking to visit the Pavilion anyway, may as well!
My friend and I each ordered the Sussex blend tea, which was nice. We were going to split the remaining slice of gluten free chocolate cake that was on display. But we were then told that there was also a gluten free lemon cake. So we got both.
The lemon cake was seriously VERY good. It was moist and very lemony. Poor neglected chocolate cake (which was also nice, but a bit dry, perhaps from sitting uncovered all day), we shovelled the lemon cake down.
The tearoom is basically the last bit before the gift shop, so if you get there and have time to kill, I’d stop in. :)

The Brighton Pavilion is one of Brighton’s tourist hot-​spots, and rightly so: it is a pleasant oddity, a pseudo-​Indian/​Chinese palace in the middle of a British coastal town! As strange as that sounds, it is really worth wandering around: there’s plenty to see, plus a café towards the end of the tour. However, this tea room isn’t anything particularly special: it’s perfectly nice in its own right, but I was certainly hoping for more from the Pavilion.
After a long, pleasant tour around the Pavilion, the idea of coffee or a nice cup of tea, or even a cream tea for those hunger cravings sounds like a great idea, and to be fair, the idea of having a café at the top of the Pavilion, with lovely views into Pavilion Gardens, is not a bad idea at all. However, everything in this café screams less of class and style, and more of a ramshackle addition to an old monument. The styling and design that mark out this particular Brighton landmark could not be further removed from the Tea Rooms: nothing seems to fit together, from the furniture to the crockery to the (as mentioned by other reviewers) hideous carpet. Add on top of that that everything here is overpriced to the extreme, and you can see why the Tea Rooms seem to be perennially empty, or at least full of disgruntled looking tourists.
If you happen to be walking around the Pavilion, and think having a cup of tea at the top of it would be quite the treat, go ahead and treat yourself! There’s nothing wrong with the Tea Rooms in general, just your typical overpriced and badly fitted café addition to a pre-​existing monument. If you don’t expect more than that, you really can’t go wrong here.

There’s something a bit stuffy and not very comfortable about the Pavilion tearoom, but that’s half the charm… it’s all so British! The carpet is horribly patterned and the tables and chairs are outdated, but still, hoards of unperturbed tourists pile in to buy overpriced tea and sandwiches. You’ve got to admire it really!
Sadly you can’t access the café unless you have paid for entrance to the Royal Pavilion itself. This is a real shame, because the balcony is really quite a spectacular place to enjoy a pot of tea– the views of the Pavilion Gardens and the old stables (now Brighton and Hove Museum) are lovely. The sandwiches (tuna, cheese and pickle, egg and cress etc.) come with kettle chips and salad but in my opinion you really ought to have a cream tea, when dining in a palace! The Royal Pavilion is quite an experience– and it is quite possible to feel a spot of stimulus overload (both visual and informational) by the time you make it upstairs– the tearooms provide a nice resting spot to sit and digest.

The Tearooms at the Royal Pavilion are quaint. In fact, they are like the realisation of quaint. After an audio tour around the Pavilion and its exotic interior you may feel slightly parched, so why not reward yourself with a pot of tea, scones, or maybe coffee and a cake if you prefer?
Unlike the Gallery Café at the Museum & Art Gallery, I wouldn’t visit these tearooms on a regular basis: the venue is not as accessible and the food at the museum is frankly better. However, I would recommend it as a stop off point after a tour of the Pavilion. If you have visitors to Brighton, then I would recommend you take them to the Pavilion and treat them to some refreshments. It’s a rather dignified affair that is certainly best appreciated on an infrequent basis.