Looking for Afternoon Tea Places in NYC
I’m visiting NY with family and my daughter (teen) wants to go out for afternoon tea (tier stand with sandwiches and pastries). I’ve found several locations via Yelp & Google but I’m looking to see if anyone on Steepster has (or know someone who has) recommendations of places that they’ve visited and like. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! :)
so for high tea, you basically want to drink tea while you eat a big meal of meats and potatoes and veggies and breads? cant you go anywhere for that? :-P
Technically, yes… I see a lot of places listing what sounds like afternoon tea as “high tea.”
Since you’re the first to respond, I’ll use this as a prompt to change the question to “afternoon tea.” :-)
For afternoon tea, the Mandarin Oriental located next to Central Park. Located on the 35th floor, the view is amazing. Prices are a little on the high side and they have a wide selection of teas.
I’ve been there. The service is excellent, their teas are good, they have great scones, but the real attraction is the view.
That one didn’t show up on my initial search, so I’ll definitely add it to the list. Thank you, Excelsior!
I’m in a NYC tea drinkers group on Facebook; might work to ask there:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1816927835213393/
That group isn’t very active, and membership is limited, but they might be the right people to ask. I was just in NYC in January, shopping for tea, but I don’t do “afternoon tea,” I just drink tea. I wouldn’t have input about the options but Google search turns up the typical lists:
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/restaurants/best-afternoon-tea-nyc-has-to-offer
Brand new here, so I hope I join in properly. I’m rediscovering my love of tea lately. I live near NYC, but small of budget, haven’t been to many places.
I have enjoyed tea and meals at the tiny, quirky Tea & Sympathy for a very British theme. There’s surely higher-end afternoon tea experiences in the city that I haven’t experienced, but it’s cozy and affordable for NYC (just looked—$12.50 for scones and tea).
It seems like bad form to answer a different question than was asked, but I’d like to also recommend shopping for loose tea while there. It’s nice to have decent tea and the little sandwiches and such but you might ramp up your home-based tea habit, and hers, while you are there, regardless of where that stands now. I wrote a post about that not long ago, shopping for tea there, but you needn’t do what I did since that could be improved on, or your interests may vary. At best you can visit shops and try teas and buy what you like but that didn’t come up much on visits where I went. I’d be happy to answer more questions about places but this post covers a lot of what I know of there, including mention of some places I didn’t make it to:
http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.com/2017/01/tea-shopping-in-new-york-city.html
With quite decent loose tea costing around $8-10 per 50 grams (or two ounces, with that pricing varying a lot, just something to mention), and that brewing lots of cups of tea if you aren’t really into loose tea so much yet it’s painless to change that. Some nice starting points: lightly oxidized high mountain oolong (from Taiwan, or Anxi Chinese Tie Kuan Yin is nice), black tea (Dian Hong from Yunnan is nice), or Longjing for green tea. You could spend a lot on those but basic versions would still be nice, or at least typically that’s the case for those types. Sorry about stating the obvious if you’re already into loose tea.
Thank you for the suggestions! I must admit that I currently have unrefined taste when it comes to teas… as I mostly drink Earl Grey and “dessert flavored teas.” Only recently have I started to venture into Pu-erh and green teas. I’ll look into Longjing and the lightly oxidized high mountain oolong. Are there any specific tea shops that you’d recommend?
I could only discuss directly where I went, described in that post, and none of those seem ideal since tasting wasn’t part of their sales process (seemingly; none offered). Of those places I’d recommend Sun’s Organic Tea Shop, but the trick there would be she sells one tea version of lots of types but guidance on which is which might be limited. Talking about that—what you might like—is difficult, since tasting and knowing for sure is a lot more direct. Te Company sounded the best of places I didn’t make it to, but of course that’s based on an indirect impression, from comments and other description.
I think factoring in location and cost would be important. It’s easy to get around NYC, in a sense, but you’ll have other agenda to consider, so sorting a place or two in makes sense. Some of the places I mentioned probably sell good teas but buying them at $1 a gram wouldn’t be appropriate for an introduction ($50 for 50 grams, which might brew tea 10 separate times, multiple infusions each time, versus $8-15 being standard for more moderate versions).
It doesn’t apply so directly to you but pu’er and green teas are my least favorite types, after blacks and oolongs as favorites, and whites in the middle. That said, the last tea I bought was pu’er, and I bought a nice shou pu’er at Sun’s Organic Tea shop (a tuocha, which she no longer sells, the sheng I bought there as dragonballs was more so-so). It would be hard to know what’s what but New Kam Man shop might be better for pu’er, for cakes, or for white tea cakes (shou mei and such). You might check that small Facebook group and ask Ele there, the owner, but it’s best to factor in that different people have different takes, preferences vary, and some might not be good at dialing back their recommendations to what would work better as a starting point versus where their preferences evolved over time. Really a good version of any tea is not so hard to appreciate related to any exposure level, but as with wine or anything else people tend to be on a certain page or pages at a certain time. Longjing has more universal appeal as green teas go, though, with less grassiness or vegetable flavors, so it can appeal to a broader audience.
I might also mention that I picked up an inexpensive gaiwan in the New Kam Man shop. You might not think you really need to start into gongfu style brewing (versus Western style), or know what that is, but they are really easy to use, and it’s completely different, and works a lot better for some tea types. There are China Life Tea introductory videos on Youtube that might work as well as any to show how that works. The general idea is that versus brewing a teaspoon of tea per cup—more or less—for Western brewing you might use double that amount for a much smaller cup, a different type, versus using a pot, and brew it lots of times versus a few. That’s only a rough version of how that really goes, but refining the steps isn’t so difficult. One device, which cost me $8 there, can help to open a door to a new way to experience tea, which is not difficult or complicated at all, unless you want it to be, then it can be. Again, sorry if you’re already past all that, most likely if you drink some pu’er you are.
You’ve probably found it searching on the internet but Alice’s Tea cup is nice and seems to fit your bill.
I added that one to my list. :-) Someone else recommended Lady Mendl’s Tea Salon… have you tried that one?
I’ve shopped at McNultey’s for decades, if you’d like an old New York experience. Just getting back into this, so I haven’t explored all that the city now offers, so am looking forward to exploring John’s picks.
I’ll add that I was just in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I trekked to Roebling Tea Room. While I see that they have pots of tea on their online menu, they are more a bar/fancy plates restaurant. The menu on the street was all $17 appetizers, so I never went in. Ended up with a nice cup of loose leaf at a simple Turkish cafe.
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