Mezzanine & Delizie by Cipriani café

Afternoon tea under a glass roof

The order that defines this café is a Russian-style afternoon tea, taken slowly, with homemade cakes and Viennese-style pastries arriving alongside it. That is the reason to build a dessert stop around Mezzanine & Delizie by Cipriani café rather than treat it as a general café: the sweet side is the programme, not an accompaniment to something else.

An atrium room with table service

The setting does a lot of the work. The café sits in a glass-roofed atrium, bright and open overhead, with the refined but relaxed feel of an upscale hotel room rather than a busy street café. Service comes to the table, the tone is quiet, and the room is elegant in a classic register rather than a fashionable one.

It suits an unhurried visit. Saint Petersburg has plenty of places to stand at a counter, and this is the opposite of that: a room designed for sitting with a pot of tea while the light comes down through the glass.

Quiet is the operative quality. The room is sophisticated without being stiff, scenic enough that the glass overhead is part of what you are looking at, and calm enough that a conversation carries across a table without effort. It is built for a long sit rather than a fast one.

Tea first, then something sweet

Start with the Russian-style afternoon tea. It is the anchor of the whole format and the thing the café is built to do, and it sets the pace for everything that follows.

Then choose from the homemade cakes and the Viennese-style pastries, which shift with what has been made that day. Between the two, the pastries are the more classically European choice and the cakes the more local one, so ordering one of each is the fullest version of the visit. Nothing here needs to be complicated: tea, something sweet, and a long sit under the atrium glass.