What a lovely little spot on the Main Line! I am an afternoon tea connoisseur, so my expectations…read morewere rather high... and they were surpassed!
I had been in the area for several days to tour apartments and daycares in advance of our planned move to Pennsylvania next year... so a lovely tea was my little splurge on the trip after days of drinking protein shakes on the go.
I made a reservation for 10 am on Sunday, right when they opened, since I was going to go straight to the airport afterward. I was seated immediately, and everything came out pretty fast. I opted for the full afternoon tea, which comes with eight tea sandwiches, a scone with clotted cream, lemon curd, and strawberry preserves, and three assorted mini pastries, along with a pot of tea.
You can choose up to four flavors for the sandwiches (so you get two of each flavor for a total of eight mini sandwiches), so I got the curried chicken salad, egg salad, cucumber and cream cheese, and cheddar cheese and chutney. Most tea places give you four sandwiches per person, so there was no way I was finishing eight of these. Thankfully, I got four of them in a to-go box and they ended up being a tasty snack on the plane. The curried chicken salad was my favorite (which they sell in their to-go containers in the gift shop), followed by the cucumber and cream cheese (the cucumbers were thinly sliced, which makes a big difference!). The egg salad was good, but a bit mild-flavored. I can't say I loved the cheddar cheese and chutney combo, so in the future I might just opt for more of the curried chicken or cucumber sandwiches instead.
For the scone, I chose blueberry citrus, which was delicious! I used a very thin layer of the lemon curd, followed by the strawberry preserves and topped with the clotted cream. All of the flavors worked quite well on the scone. I wasn't blown away by the mini desserts (I can't recall exactly what flavors they were, but there was a posset that was a bit saltier than I was expecting, a blueberry cream puff, and a mini cake slice). But as I've gotten older, I've found myself more drawn to the savory aspect of afternoon teas anyway. The rest of the meal was delicious enough, and filling enough, that I honestly was never going to be able to finish everything.
I was dining solo here, and I'm guessing not a lot of people do a tea for one, so I ended up chatting with 4-5 different employees here over the course of my meal. I have to say that the service here may have been the friendliest I've experienced pretty much anywhere. Everyone I spoke with was so welcoming and kind! When it came time for me to leave, they all wished me a safe trip back to Florida and said they hoped to see me again as one of their "regulars" once we move. I can already tell you, I hope that's the case too!
This place is adorable, inside and out. And I love the assorted British foods available in the gift shop, along with fun kitchenware. If my suitcase hadn't already been packed to the brim, I probably would've spent more money in that shop. I'm looking forward to returning next year once I escape the Sunshine State :)