Tea Time

I’ve had high tea in Victoria, albeit years ago & it is unfair to compare Tea Time to the Fairmont Express. Plus, I’m no tea connoisseur. (Where’s my cuppa?!)
I’ve been here many times this past year with a ladies’ group & I’ve come away feeling it’s overpriced for what you get. However, it’s for the ambiance of high tea & mini scones, sandwiches & such. The food is nice, service sometimes good, sometimes slow. Keep in mind this is typically dealing with a group of @6 in a very small venue.
What was definitely cute: seeing a mom come in with her young daughter (& doll) all dressed up to the nines for afternoon tea. Precious.
If it wasn’t for the group, I personally wouldn’t go back, especially for the price point. But I do return for the friendship & conversation.

Despite their advertisement of the 130+ fine teas, I cannot say I was too impressed coming here. The service was actually great, so no complaints on that end. I was just disappointed at how small this place was. We had 2 large tables of 7 (14 people total) for my friend’s bachelorette, and there were only 2 more tables of 2 left. It felt a tad cramped.
Our party was able to enjoy 3 teas while we were here, the gun powder green tea, English breakfast and chrysanthemum. The teas were good, as I am not a tea connoisseur, I cannot be the best judge on this. With our $ 30 per person, we enjoyed half a tiny quiche each, 3 tea sandwiches, a scone and a dessert/​cake type thing. The quiche was good, but the bite was so small, it was hard to fully appreciate it. The tea sandwiches were not bad. You had your classic cucumber, a chicken sandwich and a shrimp avocado. I think the small space made this experience quite different from the other tea places I’ve been to, so I can only give it 3 stars.

The scones were a bit dry and there was no refills on tea, but otherwise this place is great.
Tea selection is amazing and tasted good. We got the pomegranate white tea and the rose black tea; both were amazing.
The people who worked there were super nice and helpful and didn’t mind that we took our time.
Price is good, better than most tea places.

Of the «130+ fine teas» their website says they have, we were only allowed to try 3. Three. If we wanted to try more, we were charged. CHARGED!!! We chose their Wild Berry Tisane, Earl Grey Finest, and Vanilla Black Tea. All smelled amazing! Taste, different story… The Vanilla Black was wonderfully fragrant; but when you drank it, was sooo blaaaand! We thought maybe it wasn’t steeped long enough, but no. My Mom called that one «Lipton.» Earl Grey smelled like a spa and tasted like a spa! That one was my favorite. Again, since there weren’t many tea flavors to try, I did make an effort to try em all. I had the Berry one last. I’m not a fruity tea drinker, but this one wasn’t half bad.
On their menu, they call this their Garden Salad. You pay an extra 3 dollars for this. What it really is, is a box of spring mix with a few slices of apple on top and what they think is salad dressing but what I’m calling is: snot. This was horrible. My 8yo son could’ve made a better «salad» (sure) than this. My SIL told one of our other girlfriends, «The trick is to see if you can keep all your lettuce on the plate.» Omg, who does this?
Between the 6 of us, we were given only 3 each of 2 different Savories. Read more on my blog:
That means = if you want to try them both, you have to cut them in half. WHICH they are already small to begin with. From the BITES I was able to have… The Mushroom was rather mushy, and the Eggroll was good. (Only because I’m strange in the way that I actually like your typical generic Chinese buffet eggroll. Which is what this was.)
Again, because we were asked to preorder our meal weeks before we were going to have it and had to settle on the same of 3 sandwiches to share between 6 different people with different taste buds and different food limitations (really rolling my eyes here now)… We were stuck with Turkey Cranberry, Chicken Apple Pecan, and Shrimp with Dill and Avocado tea sandwiches. They were open face, small, and not worth the money you’re paying for them. Turkey = bland. Chicken = mayonnaise-​y, and smothered with chunks of stuff; very little chicken. My girls liked this one tho. Shrimp = this one was yummy. Still coulda used some salt. And, it wasn’t 2 bite-​friendly. You had to stick the whole thing in your mouth, or it would fall all over the place. Not cute for high tea. The shrimp was cooked perfectly tho. Okay, I’ll give them that.
Their scone fixings made me MAD. We’ve had some pretty messed up situations with the scone fixings from previous Spots, but NOTHING like this. Put them in tiny containers… don’t give them to us… give us bad tasting ones… OKAY. But this poor excuse of a (I can’t even think of a word) is disrespectful, if I may say so myself. Granted, it tasted good together. However, I would have liked the opportunity to taste them individually. And, AND– we had to share just 2 of these between siiiiiiiiiix people! Come on!
Scones were really good. Pecan, we think. The server didn’t even know what they were?! I asked what kind, and she looked at them for a good 45-​seconds before uncertainly blurting out «Pecan???» But, they were nice + crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. P. S. I would’ve loved to try their crumpets… if I was allowed to. #FixedPreorderedMenu
To be fair, this place wasn’t quite a Tea House. But, they did serve high tea and offered many teas so it fit in the criteria of our Tea Tour. It was just way too expensive for what they serve you. I’m down to pay for high tea, always. But at least let us try more of your teas; Add salt to your tea sandwiches; Give us more savories; and please oh PLEASE different containers for your scone fixings! They didn’t offer us water, and they didn’t come around + ask if we needed our teapots refilled. First time ever– I was super thirsty at a tea party.

This review is overdue from January 2015. Don’t ever come here for tea service. Service leaves everything to be desired and most of the food tastes like it’s from Costco’s freezer. When I go for tea service, it’s a special occasion and I expect service to be warm and knowledgable, and the food to be house-​made. I’ve enjoyed great tea service at Lovejoy’s and Leland’s in SF, and the Empress in BC. When I asked the waitress about two different teas, she couldn’t tell me anything about them and just offered to let me smell the leaves. Then she brewed it too lightly. She also seemed incredibly bored with her job

Service is not always quick, but there’s something about tea and sandwiches that makes me want to put my feet up and just roll with it. The food is (almost always) very good. I love the many sandwich choices — the Brie and apple crumpet, salmon tea sandwich, and chicken salad sandwich are my favorites, but I’ve tried most of them and they’re all pretty great. Scones are good, not the best I’ve had (a little dense) but still tasty, and the jam they serve with it is perfect. I also feel like the quality of the teas they offer is quite good. The Malty Irish breakfast is my favorite and is so smooth and creamy, my favorite of all the malty teas I’ve tried throughout my tea-​drinking career.
I highly recommend this place as somewhere to come and relax or celebrate with friends, or by yourself, but just don’t expect super-​fast service.

My family and friends love this place cozy place for English tea. This past summer I visited London and had tea the Ritz with my mom and husband. My mom commented, «the tea sandwiches at Palo Alto’s Tea Time are so much better!»

This is a super cute place! It has a cozy feel to it, with ambient music playing in the background. Lord of the Rings music came up at one point, so +1 for that! This is a great place to take your mom or grandma for afternoon tea, or just hanging out with a close friend friend for an afternoon.
One of my friends got the High Tea ($ 20), which is basically one pot of tea of your choice, plus a tea sandwich among a bunch of other little snacks. It is delivered on this three-​tiered tray, and looked super fancy. I got the cheese platter + a pot of tea ($ 17). The cheese platter included 3 types of cheeses, walnuts, pear slices, strawberry slices, and a few (6 maybe) crackers. This is definitely not a place to come for a meal (unless you want a super light meal). It is also kind of pricey, but I think you’re also paying for the nice ambience. The food did take a while to come out, even though the place wasn’t busy (only one other group of 2 people other than my group of 3).
Not a place I would visit often, but there are definitely certain people I would bring because I know they’d enjoy this type of stuff.

High Tea is so much fun!
I visited with two friends and we each ordered the High Tea. My two sandwich choices were the salmon and cream cheese, and the shrimp and dill salad. I loved the presentation with the items on top vs. inside the bread. The bread was very fresh as well as the toppings. The mushroom tartlet is definitely the way to go.
We asked for recommendations for tea and we received some general suggestions such as «black tea» which is a little vague when there are so many to choose from. Also, we wish we were informed that the scones were all different flavors because we would have tasted each one by splitting them. I’ll cut the girl some slack since it appeared that the other worker had gone home sick just as we arrived. Although, we were the only ones there for at least 30 minutes. Hence, 3 stars vs. 4.
Will I come back? Sure. The price is right compared to other tea rooms. I hope the spotty service was a one off situation.

Came here for my SIL’s baby shower. Parking was super easy. We had a party of 8 so we took up most of the indoor space. The service was great. The tea was great. The little nibbles were good, I guess, I am vegan so the chef whipped up my own plate which was super yummy. I live over an hour away but drinking all the tea I was pumped on caffeine so driving home was a breeze.
We had a great time. :)

My friend and I came by for high tea with reservations for late morning on a Sunday. It wasn’t busy when we arrived, so I’m not sure how necessary reservations are, but several of the tables were marked as reserved.
The tea shop is pretty small and a little cramped. There are a handful of tables inside as well as a couch set-​up and maybe 2 or 3 tables outside. They have their popular teas on display near the the door and another shelf with most of their other teas by the counter, which they call the «sniffing corner» because you can smell the teas before you order. There’s a wide variety of teas: green, black, white, oolong, herbal, flavored, etc.
I’m no expert on tea, so although I enjoyed my tea, I wouldn’t say it was particularly distinguishable from the loose leaf tea I usually drink at home. Food here is pretty simple and nothing particularly noteworthy either. Portions are small, but I still left feeling full because of all the tea. I could easily boil a pot of tea and make or buy the same quality of food for a lot less, but it wouldn’t be quite the same drinking tea and eating tiny food at home. So you’re paying much more for the experience and atmosphere than the tea and food itself.
I didn’t experience the poor service that some other Unilocalers have complained about. There were maybe 3 people working when we were there. One guy took our order and offered suggestions for tea when we asked, and we were served our tea and food pretty quickly. The servers in general checked in on us once or twice, which was perfectly fine because I prefer not to be constantly interrupted by overattentive service.
Good experience overall. I’ve been told there are nicer tea lounges, but this one looks pretty affordable in comparison to prices elsewhere.
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High tea for 2 was $ 37 and included:
–2 REGULAR POTS OF TEA (or 1 large pot) — My friend and I picked the White Pomegranate (white tea) and the Winter Blend (flavored black tea), both of which are pretty light. I loved that the teapots were dressed in cute tea cozies!
–4 TEA SANDWICHES — We got the smoked salmon with cream cheese and capers, shrimp and dill with avocado, mandarin oranges with cream cheese, and turkey with cranberry relish and strawberries. I enjoyed the shrimp and salmon the most, but they’re all pretty simple sandwiches.
–2 MUSHROOM TARTLETS (or spring rolls) — The tartlets could have easily been store-​bought, but I still liked the flavor.
–2 SCONES (with lemon curd, jam and Devonshire cream) — I’m not really a huge scone person since they can be really dry, but theirs weren’t bad.
–2 ECLAIRS — Cute and tiny but tasted pretty average.
–2 PETIT FOURS — Looked pretty! But I didn’t particularly care for the taste.
–SALAD — Just a small portion of greens, dried cranberries and slivered almonds

Love the chicken apple pecan sandwich. Also the strawberry cream rooibos. It really tastes like strawberry cream!

My sister and I took our young 5 year old niece for a «tea party» to celebrate her birthday.
The shop is very cute and there were different seating options. The staff member there was great, I’m sad I didn’t catch her name. We were asking a lot of questions specifically because we wanted to have my niece’s iced tea in a teapot. The employee accommodated that and made it work for us. We sat down and hung out for a while and after about 30 minutes, the little one started to get a little antsy. We continuously reminded her that patience is important but she wasn’t having it.
The same employee that helped us with our order notice the niece being impatient. She quickly walked over and caught her attention with a book and told her she could borrow it. Phew! She saved us from having to leave before finishing our tea. We returned the book before leaving and we saw that they have a ton of books.
I’m sold and will be back!

First timer and here is my impressions of the place: 1) we were greeted by unenthustatic owner who just said «togo?», 2) waitress was meek, slow, and boring like plain white bread, 3) it’s a tea shop and you’re not selling” the tea”, 4) music installed within the store made me feel like I was listening to elevator music, 5) food was plain and it took too long even though we were only customers, 6) it’s a tea shop and all you have is sugar packages like it’s a a fast food joint. no cubes or even a little container for sugar? And 7) the tea was probably the best thing about this place but don’t expect the chai soy to taste like the starbucks you are use to.

I went to this tea shop a couple of months ago when I went to visit my dear friend in Stanford. I was terribly excited, having seen the immense amount of loose leaf teas they had on display, and I figured, «Hey, it’s Palo Alto! It must be pretty nice, amirite?»
It was okay. I came for the tea service, and it was not particularly good. If I had come to purchase loose leaf tea for that sole purpose alone, it would definitely be a higher score. However, the tea service is lacking.
Our waitress was soft-​spoken, well-dressed…and intensely bored. She looked like she didn’t really care for working at this place where you’re surrounded by lovely teas all day long, and that just doesn’t bode well for me. How am I supposed to trust you with tea suggestions if you look like you’ve never cared to try any of them?
The food was okay, but definitely nowhere near the same quality nor quantity as Dartealing. Cutting sandwiches into pretty shapes does not change the flavor. At all. Ever. In any realm. Nothing tasted fresh. I mean, to be fair, anyone could have made this at home, but I think the true beauty of sandwiches lies in the fact that when someone else makes it for you, it tastes better. It was not the case with this tea service. It was a few bucks cheaper than my usual tea spot in SF, but for the amount and quality, it was absolutely not worth the trouble. I suggest just getting the cheese platter, as you still get the tea and you don’t have to deal with feeling immensely disappointed in your sandwich platter.
The main plus was that the teas themselves were quite good, and the teapots had teapot cozies, which is extra lovely. I wouldn’t drive all the way out to Palo Alto againf for it, but luckily, they have their own website where you can purchase the teas and just have them shipped to you. I’d much rather go for the online service, because I don’t have to deal with their lackluster in-​house service.
The real problem with that, though, is you still can’t transfer scents through the internet, and that won’t help much with figuring out what to buy. The bored waitress had no opinion at all on any of the teas, and was therefore terribly unhelpful. Sorry, Tea Time — you are no match for the tea shop that is nearest and dearest to my heart. If you want a pleasant tea service, there are loads of other places that will tower over this one in terms of service and quality of food — the tea here is pretty good, though, so take a good whiff of the tea leaves and buy a bag to have at home.

Cute little shop. I was walking around downtown and needed something refreshing, yet caffeine free. Tea generally has an herbal line. The shop only sells pre-​made tea, not fresh steeped tea. And they don’t sweeten it for you. Cost me $ 3.50 for an iced tea.
Cute little shop. Wide tea selection of loose leaf teas.

From reading other people’s reviews it seems that we’re all on the same page.
First off, my friend and I ordered the high tea for 2 for $ 36.99 which includes 2 regular pots of tea, choice of 2 tea sandwiches each, 2 mushroom tartlets, garden salad, 2 mini chocolate eclairs, 2 scones, and 2 petit fours.
We made an 11am reservation on a Saturday and were the only party there when we arrived. The server was really friendly but she looked and acted really inexperienced. She didn’t really know the menu very well and had difficulty pouring our tea and spilled twice while serving us. She was very polite and apologized heavily so I feel bad giving an average review but my experience was just that – average.
The tea sandwiches were good. I really enjoyed the smoked salmon & my friend really liked the turkey cranberry, the smoked gouda was alright. The desserts were really yummy. I really liked the cinnamon scone & the mini eclairs :) The mushroom tartlets were yummy as well but they didn’t really taste like mushroom to me-​kind of reminded me of a mini quiche.
Had the butter truffle tea which I highly recommend if you’re into mildly sweet tea :)
If you’re looking for a real high tea experience, you’re not going to get it here because the vibe is kind of more like a café. Service is not the best because they seem severely understaffed (only one server and the time I was there, not a very good multi-​tasking one). Food is good so if you don’t mind waiting for refills or requests for cream, then I would say, it’s a decent place to try. There are of course better (but more expensive) high tea places in the area and I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to come back here.

My expectations were a bit higher. I will have to try Lisa’s Tea Treasures on my next outing. The two ladies were nice, but can’t multi-​task very well. When I walked in there were only 3 customers around 2 p.m. I waited patiently as the ladies helped the two gentlemen who ordered drinks to go. It took the ladies awhile for them to look up and acknowledge me. I reserved afternoon high tea, she asked me to choose the items off their menu, and sat me in the back. The table was extremely wobbly, so after she poured the tea, it spilled out of the cup as I drank it. I guess it was time for one of the ladies to get off, and another lady clocked in. Keep in mind, it’s almost 3 p.m. and a group of elderly women came in for tea time. They started talking about «Downtown Abby», and that was my cue to go home.
My palate was satisfied with the two tea sandwiches (smoked salmon & cream cheese w/​capers, chicken apple pecan salad), one mushroom tartlet (aka quiche), scone and desserts. If I wasn’t in the area for business/​errands, I would not make the trek from SF to have afternoon high tea. Overall, mediocre.

If you love tea, you’d love this place! My best friend had a Groupon for tea tasting… and since she knew I loved tea, she took me here! When we entered Tea Time, I felt like I walked into a Downton Abbey-​like era with delicate tea cups lining the walls and yellow daisies in vases decorating every table. The tea tasting included six different teas paired with six different foods.
From Taiwanese tea to Japanese tea to Peppermint tea, we were able to learn about the different places these teas were made, the process of how they were made, and what flavors these teas tasted good with. I loved all the teas, but the food that these teas were paired with were bomb dot com! The three tiered carriers were so cute.
Some of the food: Chicken-​Apple-​Pecan Salad, Bay Shrimp Salad Topped with Avocado, and Smoked Salmon with Cream Cheese.
If you did the tasting, you were able to get 20% off when you purchase any of the teas. The teas ranged from $ 7 to $ 20, but I was definitely more interested in buying their tea cups and tea pots. I wish I took pictures of them because some of the details and designs were so articulate and fancy!
Without the Groupon, the tasting would’ve been $ 90. That is definitely on the steep side… so I don’t know if I would come back without a deal. But I guess once in a while, it’s nice to come here with your girlfriends, sit back and enjoy some tea and delicious food!

My sister had an expired Groupon for a 6 course tea and food pairing ($ 95). If you don’t know, when a Groupon expires, the store is supposed to honor the value paid, in this case is was $ 45.
When we arrived we told them we made a reservation and the man behind the counter was very confused and asked who we made the reservation with, it was over the phone so we had no idea. He kept apologizing and saying he wasn’t sure what to do. The female behind the counter said they weren’t doing Groupons anymore and sorry, end of story. we argued that we are supposed to get face value for the Groupon and the man agreed, found our reservation and seated us next to the fire. (they lost a star for a very uncomfortable greeting)
Two of the food pairings come with sandwiches that include mayo. My sister cannot eat mayo so she asked for her food without. They apologized and said that the food was already made and they could not serve it sans mayo. But thankfully they were able to substitute two different sandwiches which she said, went well with the pairings…
The food and the tea were very tasty, I really enjoyed the chicken and pecan sandwich with the apple cut up into it. YUM! The teas were all good, but the mint was my least favorite.
When we were finished our server only charged us for tax. He said the Groupon covered it all. (good for us, bad for them since we should have only gotten $ 45 off of the $ 95 pairing. We left him with a $ 20 tip.
The entire thing took about 2 hours so make sure you have some time on your hands. It was a really fun and tasty experience and hope to be back! YUM! I definitely recommend!