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 cafe 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 cafe at the top of the Pavilion, with lovely views into Pavilion Gardens, is not a bad idea at all. However, everything in this cafe 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 cafe addition to a pre-existing monument. If you don't expect more than that, you really can't go wrong here. read more