A lovely spot of tea

[ellen_datlow]

A friend and I discovered a lovely place to have tea in the east village: Podunk, which is much nicer than its name. At 2:45 it was empty so I had time to read a few pages of Simmons' The Terror while waiting. I had a pot of lady grey tea and a high tea (it wasn't called that) with cucumber sandwiches (no crusts of course), cookies, scones and jam and cream, plus some cake (I brought home the cake bits and cookies). I gather it was packed a few hours earlier and it started filling up again by the time we left at 4:30. Definitely worth another visit.

Comments

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

It was called by a specific name the restaurant gave it: "Friends tea" but the overall name is indeed "high tea" --afternoon tea around 3-5 pm with sandwiches, and everything else I mentioned. I've never had meat, fish, or eggs with it. I think you mean the kind of obsolete "tea" that was considered "supper" at one time.

hmmm...

[themadblonde]

according to Wikipedia (which agrees & sumarises other research I've done), High Tea "is an early evening meal, typically eaten between 5 and 6 o'clock in the evening. It would be eaten as a substitute for both afternoon tea and the evening meal."

To me, it sounds like what you had was "afternoon tea:"
"a light meal typically eaten at 4 o'clock....Traditionally, loose tea would be served in a teapot with milk and sugar. This would be accompanied by various sandwiches (customarily cucumber, egg and cress, fish paste (bloater), ham, and smoked salmon), scones (with butter, clotted cream and jam — see cream tea) and usually cakes and pastries (such as Battenberg, fruit cake or Victoria sponge)."

Re: hmmm...

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Yup--that's what we had (although only the cucumber sandwich). Thanks for looking it up :-)

actually...

[themadblonde]

I'm a tea nut. That's how I remembered it but I wanted to confirm that my memory was correct (so often it isn't) so off to Wiki I went.

I have a few friends in town who are sales reps for Simple Graces (an at-home tea sales company) & we're going to the only tea "manufacturer" in the Cities for their annual tea tasting this coming weekend. We've got a few tea rooms in town, & a few more coffee shops that also serve an afternoon tea, but I wish there were more.