Downtown’s The London Tea Room is kept afloat by a superlative selection of properly brewed teas, a nifty little menu and an unbroken line of humor descended straight from Monty Python. (Oh, but they’re wags and wiseacres.) Here are three reasons to give it a go.
1. A ridiculously huge selection of teas, brewed up right. The menu boasts dozens and dozens of teas, a number of which are blended on-site. They include old favorites like Darjeeling, Irish Breakfast and Yerba Maté, as well as more exotic brews like the Iron Goddess of Mercy Oolong, the Naughty Vicar (black tea with a touch of black currant and organic vanilla), and Organic Plum Berry White. They’re all available for sale by the one-eighth pound (or more). If you’re looking to sit down, though, you’re in for an even better treat. The LTR employees brew tea properly, steeping your tea at its optimal temperature. Green tea, for instance, steeps at 160 degrees, while black tea steeps at a boiling 212 degrees. They also don’t use teabags, or even those metal tea balls, which confine the tea in a horrid style akin to stuffing sunshine in a box and telling it to just shut up and do what it’s told. Instead, they infuse water with loose tea leaves in a press, allowing them to breathe and fully flavor the brew. The tea arrives at your table in your own personal teapot so that you may enact the ritual of pouring and benefit from that civilized feeling, which will vanish the moment your cell phone rings or your child picks his nose – but hey, you tried.
2.The good food to accompany your cup. Tea is fine by its lonesome, but it’s a dandy digestif, too, after the tea room’s quiche, authentic scones, tasty little breakfast sandwich (sausage, egg and sharp English cheese on a toasted honey-wheat English muffin), salads and popular house-made soups. Lunch sandwiches are also a crowd pleaser, including the croque-monsieur and the cheese and Branston sandwich (sharp Cheddar and the imported relish Branston pickle on Pugliese bread).
3. The relentlessly cheeky wording of the menu and Web site. It would be egregious not to mention the burbling spring of linguistic wiseassery on the tea room’s menu and Web site. Here are a few favorites:
-“Consult our pastry case for daily specials, baked fresh each morning. And by ‘consult,’ we mean: buy something and eat it.”
-“Please note that this is just the most fixed sampling of teas that we carry. New teas and seasonal varieties arrive constantly so make sure to check out our entire selection while you’re here. Or you can simply look within your soul and find the Divine Ground wherein the entire universe is connected. Our menu should be posted there as well.”
– With your sandwich, instead of crisps (potato chips) you can “substitute fruit cup for 2.00 US” or “substitute a full slab of ribs for 19.00,” (as if).
– On the tea room’s Web site, a tribute to Mr. Darcy, of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is scored to the song Hungry Eyes from the film, Dirty Dancing. This lot does know how to have fun. And brew tea. (Not necessarily in that order.)
This article appears in January 2011.