Tea away from home

Your favourite tea room?

Tea away from home: having a cup of tea out.

Here’s our reflection… Sitting down in a quaint café studying the thick beams ravaged by time you are greeted by a semi-retired lady who has surrendered to interminable undusted spider’s webs. You fidget uncomfortably on the hard wheel-back chair and adjust to the stale air and faded chintzes of that tea-cave you were trying to avoid.

Prising the tea menu from its cracked acrylic holder you study the tired hobson choices of tea. They are the same old teabags and, settling for the least offensive and safest of the unknown brews on offer, the sense of anticipation created is about as vivid as an English grey sky in summer.

In the depths of the rear lean-to you hear the chink and crash of sadly cheerful china and the sound of the coffee machine pressed hissingly into a new and reluctant life of supplying hot wetness for its rival tea. And what an under-whelming, de-oxidised, sub-boiling and metal-tainted gift from someone’s god it is. One can almost hear those cheated tea leaves loose their joi-de-vivre as well as what little taste they were ever blessed with.

After waiting forlornly for the infusion to reach something close to the colour and smell we had in mind we timidly pour the unloved potion into our cups. We close our eyes we know not whether in anticipation or prayer. We drink in reflection of what it might have been.

Another tea, another tea-room.

Our poll shows that 57% customers, having had a cup of tea in a café, tea-room, bar, restaurant or hotel would not return. If you are a tea-room what does this indicate could be improved with the preparation of the tea you serve? Is the water good enough, fresh enough or freshly boiled? Is the tea of good quality and distinctive taste? Is sufficient quantity used? Is it brewed for sufficiently long? Does the tea stew once the first cups are poured? Does it get cold? Do you advise when a particular tea would be best served without milk?

If these are indeed the questions we are sure we have the answers. Just ask us!

See our latest poll and the results of previous polls.

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