Jennifer Lo

Review of The Russian Tea Room

Although I lived in the tri-state area all my lif...

Although I lived in the tri-state area all my life, ironically I had never had afternoon tea in NY. I had afternoon/hi-tea in many establishments in Asia, so I expected my experience in NY to be similar. I took the chance to try hi-tea in NY when a friend from out of town came. It was her first time going to tea, so I choose the Russian Tea Room from the reviews I have heard. We made reservations, so we were quickly seated. But reservations were unnecessary as there were about 5 parties of two when we arrived. I expected it to be a bit more crowded since we did go on Columbus Day.

After we were seated, the waiter immediately brought us the menu. We had a quick glance and he explained the two different tea sets they had to offer. We opted for the traditional tea set which came with an assortment of sandwiches, scones, and sweets, and of course a choice of tea. I choose the Formosa Oolong tea, which was quickly brought out after we had placed our order. The teacup was quite different from the traditional ones I've seen. It was a drinking glass places in a metal type of holder. The waiter poured the tea and explained to us that it was Russian tradition to put preserved raspberries in our tea for sweetener. I usually don't take anything with my tea, but decided to give the tradition a try. The tea had a bit of a tart taste with the added raspberries, which was what I expected. It was good to give it a try, but I definitely prefer my tea as is. Our tea set was brought out to us in two rounds. First, the sandwiches were brought with caviar on the top and a mix of sandwiches on the other two trays. The smoked salmon and shrimp salad sandwich were the best, and the others I could pass on. I was a bit disappointed that they didn't serve cucumber sandwiches as that was a favourite of mine during my college days. The second set came out with the sweets. There were chocolates on the top, cupcakes in the middle, and scones on the bottom. We were stuffed from the sandwiches and could only munch on the scones. The waiter noticed that we couldn't have anymore, and kindly offered to pack our sweets to go, which was a bit unexpected. I've never taken the food leftover from tea, and I'm quite surprised that the Russian Tea Room graciously asked.