Leland Tea Company

I recently found this place and I have to say it feels like home! I’ve had stellar service every time I’ve come here. All in all this place is so cute and has a great vibe and energy this is for sure going to be my new regular place!

The place is tiny and gets booked up quickly so reservations are highly recommended. We were lucky enough to call the same day and get reservations — they will suggest good times to come in. We did the tea for two lunch and got the salmon salad which was delicious! For 29.96 you get teapot, 2. tea sandwiches, salad, 2 scones, 2 tea cookies and 2 madelines. It was a little difficult selecting the tea so we just asked for Will’s recommendation and it was a good one! Sorry I can’t remember what kind of green tea it was but it had hints of ginger and lemongrass which were perfectly balanced. The salad was delicious — very fresh with greens, carrots, tomatoes, and cashews. The scones and madelines are baked fresh daily onsite. They were serviceable — ok for the experience but I have had better scones and madelines elsewhere. I do give them an «A» for effort. I will definitely be back to try other teas and tea sandwiches and the salad. This is a fun place for showers or catching up with others over tea or a light meal. Support local small business!

Whether you are a tea lover or not when in Northern California, I recommend dropping by the Leland Tea Company on Donnelly Ave. Leland Tea Company is a cool little place with a wide selection of delicious teas that I am sure will satisfy whatever tea taste you are craving. To name a few: Mango, Peaches, and Pear Caramel.
When I came here, we mostly stayed within the Black teas, but I most definitely would love to next time indulge in their Green, Red, Herbal, White, and Oolong teas. There were so many options to choose from that it was hard to decide which teas we wanted to take with our lunch.
Their tea service included a pot of their House Tea (tea list found on website, not only limited to the teas listed above, those were just our picks for that Tea day) with different options of salads, sandwiches, and for a light dessert it may include fresh fruit, or a scone or tea cookie. I recommend the Turkey and Swiss or Roast Beef and Gorgonzola Cheese sandwich. For dessert, a chocolate chip scone, and of course the teas I mentioned earlier were incredible.
Hope this persuades you to come here for a visit and try something different!

Came here for a bridal shower and loved it. The owner clearly loves tea and the food features tea in amazing and creative ways! The tea was great, the food was great, and the owner told us fun and interesting stories. He’s a character, which explains some of the reviews. I had a great experience and wanted to tell everyone else to try this tea place!

Came here for my friend’s Birthday luncheon. She wanted a high tea luncheon and this place looked very nice. I made reservations on the phone with «Will» who sounded very nice. I added that it was my friend’s Bday and asked if they do anything special and he said to call a few days prior to coming and they will make sure to make cupcakes for this occasion.
I called a few days ahead and reminded him of my friend’s Bday, no problems and he sounded very nice.
We had an 11am reservation and were a few minutes early. Parking was no problem at that time. There were city lots and spaces available for $ 0.25 per 15 min. We never saw any free parking spaces. Parking is limited to 2 hours, but we didn’t think this would be a problem and it wasn’t. We started to enter the front house but it was a salon! Then we noticed 1223 was further back. BEWARE, it is behind the front white house.
As we entered we noticed a very cozy eating area with about 7 tables of varying sizes. We were greeted by Will and told to sit at one of the two tables with two place settings. Will came and asked what tea we wanted. He suggested a very nice sounding tea and we chose it. He informed us that we could see and smell the samples near the counter, there were lots of samples. He said we could also combine some to make a pot for us for the meal but we chose the flavor he suggested. Then his mother came over and asked us what sandwiches we wanted. We chose the chicken salad and the cucumber and cream cheese ones. She went off and made them. Will was very nice and enthusiastic and seemed to enjoy talking and telling us about the teas. He was a pleasure to talk to, with a passion for what he is doing.
The pot of tea and two plain mugs were brought first. Then a three layered serving plate was brought. We didn’t have to wait very long. The bottom layer had our sandwiches, chicken salad with tomato on wheat bread in ¼ sandwich cuts, and open faced cucumber sandwiches with wonderful crispy cuts of cucumber on cream cheese on white looking bread. The next tier had a very nice salad with a light coating of dressing that was very good. The top tier had two plain madelines, two thumbprint type cookies and two scones with butter and a small container of jam in the center. Looked very nice. Everything tasted very good.
Finally I asked about the cupcakes for my friend’s Bday and Will brought out two mini cupcakes, chocolate with chocolate frosting and we celebrated her Bday.
I thought the mini cupcakes were a special treat for Bday people, I found out at the end that they cost $ 6 for the two mini cupcakes!
Overall it was a nice experience but plain. There were plain mugs, plain pots etc. Everything tasted good but nothing was special. Ambiance was not of an English tea «spot» but more of a nice place to eat. By the time we left, all the tables were filled which says alot for this place.
I don’t know if I would return or not. It is quite a distance away from where I live. It was a nice experience while I was there

I hate to give a bad review but the experience today was pretty awful. Let’s start with the reservations. I made reservations about 3 weeks ago and the owner called to confirm. I called today to make sure that our reservations were still on for the afternoon and I had to speak to someone who was unable to help me who finally passed me on to someone else who was only partially able to assist me with my inquiry. However, she could not find my reservations but when I gave her more details and after a 5 minute exploration of how they could have lost my reservations, she said she finally found it listed under 4 A.M. that day (who makes reservations at 4 AM to a tea shop?) Anyway, she told me that the owner tends to get distracted easily so apparently instead of putting me down for 4 people, he mixed up the «4» as «4 am». Whew. So anyway, at our 1 PM reservations, I get there before the rest of my party and the staff was setting up a table. I went to the restroom and when I came back, another lady was sitting at my table, along with one of my friends from our party who had arrived. Apparently, the person handling the reservations got us mixed up as she was supposed to have 2 separate reservations for 4 people. Good thing I left my coat behind prior to going to the restroom in order to stake a claim on the table. Whew! Exhausting. So the rest of my party arrived and the wait staff kept getting confused on our order. 3 different wait staff came to check on us but they were not communicating, so everytime someone came, it felt like we were starting once again with our order. It was EXHAUSTING! So, two out of three of the tea pots we ordered finally came and we kept telling the wait staff that we ordered three and somehow we never got the third (although they tried to charge us for it at the end). Then we asked for milk and sugar (we had to ask several times before they finally came), but they did not give us spoons so had to use the back of our knife to stir the milk into the tea. So this exhausting tirade of trying to order lasted about 2 hours and during the middle of this, a lady named Juanita who was very nice, came to us and apologized for the disorganization. She said the owner (Will) left in a rush to go to Europe for some tea conference, leaving her 3 days to train on just the basic stuff. She looked utterly overwhelmed and she told us she just had to take care of some folks at the counter but would return and straighten everything out. Needless to say, she never returned and we did not see her until it was time to pay the bill. One of my friends even felt sorry for her and had to help her refill the two pots of tea with water and carry them back to our table.
At the end of this frustrating experience, we found out they could not bring us the check to the table and that we had had to go up to the counter to pay our bill. When I asked to see the itemized charges, they could not provide it for us. The lady said only the total would come up on her register, so not sure if we even got charged correctly. I know we got charged for 3 pots even though we never got the third one. So I pointed this out to her, which she then kindly removed from the bill. We still don’t know if we got charged correctly though as the bill came out to $ 156.00 (before tip) for two plates of sandwiches and salad and two pots or tea, so it seems that we may have been overcharged. At this point, everyone in our party was exhausted and tired of trying to get our order correct so we just paid the bill as it was and still left a generous tip.
I know everyone there was well-​meaning but it was a bad experience and also embarrassing to two of the people in our party, whose birthdays we were celebrating. I did want to say a few positive things. Will’s mother who was there helping, tried her best to help us and told us that she makes the pastries herself every morning. Her chocolate scone is pretty good. She was a sweet, elderly lady and we could tell that she was overwhelmed also. Juanita also tried to make the experience a little better for us but she was merely standing in to help while the owner was away and was not familiar with the shop and the details of how it ran. As much as she tried, she had her hands full and in the end could not show us an itemized bill. Thank you Juanita and Will’s mom for trying, but I don’t think we will be back. We usually go to Lovejoy’s or one of the hotels’ high tea (Palace, Fairmont, Mandarin Oriental). I think we will stick to those places. Best wishes and hope the owner returns soon to resume order.

The shop is so close to being perfectly adorable but at the same time it’s the things they lack that make it a little rough around the edges.
The animal art on the walls representing different SF/​Bay Area neighborhoods are wonderful and the tables of the other guests here were full of tea sandwiches petit fours and really cute pots of tea, so maybe the trick is to get there early and sit down with tea service.
Taking tea to go is maybe not your best bet. I would have been happy to stay but the person at the counter made it sort of seem like they were closing… though it turns out they weren’t closing for 2 more hours.
The service was very strange. We felt like the person taking care of us was possibly a method actor researching a role of what one would do if they worked in a tea shop and it was also their first day. From ordering to paying, everything was way more complicated than it needed to be and the interactions we had we supremely awkward.
I would have loved to see a menu instead of choosing which magnetic tins to smell based on name or style. Knowing what the flavors the smells blossom into would have been incredibly helpful… and probably would have prevented my tea-​mate from choosing a tea that tasted really dank (using dank in the regular way, as in ‘disagreeably damp, musty’, and not the weed way as in ‘of high quality’).
My Jamaican Bang tea was really unique, not at all floral and more earthy. I enjoyed it on the especially rainy, cold day but for a little over $ 7 for 2 green teas and virtually no customer service… I don’t know if its something I can see myself making a regular thing.

Great tea! Great environment! The owner and his mother are great. They make you feel right at home.

The owner is always cheerful, makes great recommendations and makes for a great experience. Was looking for my Oolong obsession recently and came out with an awesome blend with a bit of Lapsong in it. It’s too bad I dont work in the area anymore. Totally miss the place/