My Favorite Tea House

Other tea houses have nicer, more sophisticated decor.  Other tea houses have more complex menus.  But hands down, Sally Lunn's Tea Room  in Chester, NJ is my sentimental favorite tea house for now and pretty much ever.

I discovered Sally Lunn's about 15 years ago.  It is tucked into a back street in the antiques district of Chester, NJ.  You can't see it from the street, and from the outside it looks like a frowsy old lady antique shop.  That impression won't much change when you go inside.  The tables are covered in long lace table cloths.  The walls are packed with china tea cups and weird antiques, most of which are for sale (and some of which are surprisingly valuable as I recently discovered).  Most men walking into Sally Lunn's immediately feel that they are about to be the bull in the proverb.

The waitresses are generally college-age or high school females dressed in long skirts and aprons.  On days when the shop is not packed, service is pretty good.  However, on high traffic days, like Mother's Day, they frequently get overwhelmed and forget things like drink refills.

There is a six-page tea menu, and I have never had case where the tea I wanted was out of stock.  There are a number of very good in-house blends of black teas as well as the standard flavored and herbals.  They also make a spectacular aromatic chai.  For those who are not tea fans, the shop carries lemonades and a delightfully refreshing lemon-lavender drink.

The menu is so very very very British.  There is a ploughman's lunch with Branston pickle, an astoundingly good cottage pie (shepherd's pie), as well as the traditional tea sandwiches like cucumber and shrimp salad.  One of my favorite dishes is the ham and brie on wheat bread with apple butter.  Most dishes come with a side salad.  The fruit and Caesar salads are very good, but if you are a cheese lover do not skip the green salad with Stilton cheese dressing.

The scones are a dream.  The come, of course, with Devon cream and strawberry jam.   There are generally about 6-7 different types of scones a day, hitting most of the usual flavors and an occasional seasonal flavor like pumpkin or peach.

Save room to sample the wide variety of profoundly British desserts, including multiple different kinds of trifles and treacle pie.   I have literally never had a bad dessert here.

Sally Lunn's carries many of its teas in loose form for purchase.  It sells tea paraphernalia and a number of British food products.

It is not a perfect or high end dining experience by any means.  As I mentioned, the servers can get overwhelmed when the shop is very busy.  There is a single one-seater bathroom which makes for long lines on busy days.  Also, the shop is not really designed for very large parties.  For a group of 6 or less, you'll have better luck.

Nevertheless, I love this place.  It's homey and quirky and adorkable.  The cottage pie is one of the single best pieces of comfort food I've ever eaten.   There are places with better food and places with more elegance, but Sally Lunn's is like family.

Bad Tea Chronicles: Steaz Iced Green Tea with Raspberry

I saw Steaz Iced Green Tea with Raspberry  in the supermarket when buying lunch today, and decided to give it a try.  It is canned iced tea that advertises itself as naturally sweetened and zero calories.   I am here to put you all on notice.  If you see a Steaz Iced Green Tea with Rapsberry in your vicinity, run.  Run far, run fast, and don't look back because it might see you.  If you have a can in your possession now, put a stake through its heart and bury it at the crossroads in a ring of rock salt.

It is awful.  Pure awful in a can.  I took one gulp and promptly began looking for some way to wipe the taste off my tongue.  I am contemplating eating a bag of Doritos because that unnatural flavor is the only thing I can think of that might be enough to kill off this lingering repulsive aftertaste.

My single gulp was a bizarre combination of overly sickeningly sweet and overly grassy, with a dose of strangely chemical backtaste.  It's like what I imagine a SweeTart would taste like after being rolled in grass, dipped in the Passaic River, and then put back in my mouth.  I don't know if it was the sweetener or if the tea had simply gone bad in the can (although "drink by" date is in 2016), or if it is simply the height of manufactured awfulness, but I advise never ever drinking this, even on a dare.

Tea tasting: Zhena's Gypsy Tea Raspberry Earl Grey

As the weather move from iced tea season into hot tea season, more reviews should be happening.

Zhena's Gypsy Tea is a brand I've not tried before, and the notion of a Raspberry Earl Grey was so unusual that I thought it worth trying.  It was either going to be delightful or awful, and who better to take the bullet for my reading public by drinking bad tea so you don't have to?

This combination should not work.  Bergamot oil, the main flavoring in Earl Grey, is a citrus oil.  You would expect raspberry and citrus to be overly sweet.  And you would be completely wrong.

This tea uses a properly light hand with both the Bergamot oil and the raspberry, yielding a highly drinkable and smoothly flavored tea.  The raspberry notes come out in the aftertaste rather than as a sweet element in the beginning.  I am going to try adding some raspberry honey tomorrow and see what interesting things that does to the flavor.

Tea House: Tea at A Taste of Britain

Snuggled in a high-end strip mall in Wayne, PA is A Taste of Britain, a tea shop with a small adjacent gift shop carrying British food products.   There are about a dozen tables in a sunny room with sleek but calming decor, including art by local artists.  It was an excellent experience (and not just for the lovely company of +Cathy Griswold and +Wendy Marques) and I grade this tea house with a solid A.

The service was attentive without being overbearing.  +Wendy Marques  got stuck in traffic and was late, but our server was more than happy to bring us initial drinks and let us wait for her without trying to hustle us along.  She was also nicely knowledgeable about the various tea options on the menu.

The tea menu offered a variety of options for every palate.  I started the day with a deep, rich Kenya black.  I hadn't had Kenya tea before and was quite pleased.  I think the mention of "subtle fruit notes" in the menu oversells the strength of those notes, though.  Let's just say they were pretty darn subtle.

For my second pot of tea of the day, I ordered "White Tea with Raspberry & Ginger," which the menu described as "Tangy and complex, with dried raspberries and ginger, subtly spiced with cardamom, star anise, and cloves."  This was utterly enchanting.   So much so that I bought a quarter pound to take home.  It was like a delicate fruity gingerbread.

In addition to tea, they also do spritzers made from soda water/tonic and fruited cordials.

For a mere $18.00, I ordered a full afternoon tea that was heartier and more filling than some meals I've had.  The sandwiches were flavorful and savory -- a classic cucumber sandwich with some nice herbs, an interesting cheese and chutney on wheat toast, a flavorful chicken salad and something else I'm not currently remembering.   The scone was everything a scone should be, rich and substantial and full of flavor.  I ended up taking the mini-pastries from the tea home because I was too full to eat them.  They didn't travel well, but that my have been because I left them in a muggy car for a couple of hours.

We also had an excellent appetizer of mushrooms in a hot cheese sauce flavored with mustard, with flatbread pieces for dipping.  I must figure out how to make this, as mushrooms and cheese are some of my favorite things in the universe.

I highly recommend A Taste of Britain to people in the greater Philadelphia area.  I look forward to a chance to go back again.

Bottled iced tea: Honest Tea Peach White Tea

This working for a living thing has slowed down my ability to write about tea.  Drat it all   :-)

As I've talked about before, finding bottled iced tea that is not far too sweet is a significant challenge.  I'm pleased to report I've found another one that is highly drinkable, refreshing and only very lightly sweetened.

Honest Tea's Peach White iced tea is billed as "just a tad sweet" and, for a nice change of pace, that description is accurate.  There is a hint of peach and a hit of unflavored sweetness and the nice bitter tang of tea over it all.  It manages to be palate-cleansing like a good tea should be without making me want to reach for an insulin shot.