The high tea that first got me hooked on high tea was at the Empress Hotel on Victoria Island in British Columbia. I was 11 and my parents had taken me on a cross-country road trip from our small town in Connecticut all the way to the other side of the continent. This had been an especially eventful drive as I got my first period somewhere around the Dakotas. I’m nearly certain it had nothing to do with the tea.
I remember sitting at a sunny table by the window at the Empress, across from my parents, as a server set down a tiered silver tray, teapots, and teacups. I took a scone onto my plate, and dipped my knife into a small pot of clotted cream, spreading it carefully on my scone before doing the same with seedy strawberry jam. Even as a kid, I appreciated the sophisticated pleasure of it—a pause in one’s afternoon simply to eat delicate sandwiches and warm tea in very beautiful, very breakable porcelainware.
I have been chasing that experience ever since the afternoon at the Empress. Given the vast cultural reach of the British Isles—colonial tentacles extending to nearly every corner of the globe—I’ve had thoroughly pleasant high tea experiences in many places around the world. If there’s tea to be had, I’m usually having it.
It is useful, however, to start at the source. All the grand dame hotels in London offer high tea. One rainy, November afternoon I scurried across the street alone to the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair, dodging loudly-colored Maseratis and Lamborghinis out front, a reminder of how even London’s most classic properties have become playgrounds for the global rich. I ducked out of the rain and into the hotel lobby. On the left is the sunroom where the Connaught hosts their teas. I’m there to enjoy tea for one.
Much like dining alone, or having a drink alone at a bar, high tea alone presents a particular sort of confidence-inducing pleasure. A tea pot for one, a tiered platter with one type of each finger sandwich, a single teacup. What the experience lacks in conviviality it makes up for in peace. It’s meditation for caffeinated people. I pull out the newspaper.
I ordered the tea that comes with a flute of champagne, as is generally my want. It being November, the tiered tray of sandwiches and cakes had a distinctly holiday flair: little snowmen cookies, red and green petit fours. I sipped tea and champagne alone, as the London rain fell on the sunroom roof overhead. What could be cozier than this very moment, nibbling at my pleasingly flavorful and fastidiously de-crusted sandwiches? The English take some amount of shit for being stuffy, and perhaps you could point to this staid exercise as evidence. But I think that’s a misread. This is a well-worn tradition that is, at its root, about care.
Tea comforts. I have so often been in hotel rooms around the world and found a balm of familiarity by flicking on the room’s tea kettle and brewing a cuppa. It provides a spot of luxury even in decidedly un-luxurious circumstances. It’s a tip of one’s cap to the soul.
Tea warms, which can be important in often-damp England but is just as edifying in hotter climes. One of my favorite teas in the world is at the Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa, nicknamed “The Nellie”. I went for tea there the first time I ever visited Cape Town. The tea service is set in an elegant room in the blush-pink colonial hotel, against the stunning backdrop of Table Mountain. Cape Town is a city unlike any other, and this delectable tea service (spread out as buffet) is rooted deeply in the specific beauty of the place. I have been back for tea at the Nellie every trip since.
During that first visit to South Africa, my mom was hanging on every update I relayed home. She had never been to South Africa—or anywhere in Africa, for that matter. She was the kind of parent who lived vicariously through every experience I had, big or small. This was in part because she was intensely curious, but she was also genuinely happy for me as I acquired each new glimpse of the world. She knew how happy those kinds of experiences made her and seemed to delight in knowing how happy they would make me. When I came home raving about South Africa, my Christmas gifts that year all became South Africa-themed. Among them was a book called “I Had Tea at the Nellie”: a slim volume documenting all the many personalities who had been through the Mount Nelson Hotel for tea over the years. Now I was one of them.
That tea at the Nellie was many years ago now. More recently, in December 2024, my mom came to visit us for Christmas. I had just had my first baby, my son, five months before. Mom was weak from cancer treatments, and we were all missing my dad who had passed away a few years prior. But still, it was the best Christmas I’ve ever had. Together with only the people I love most (my son, my husband, my dear mom) laughing, listening to Christmas music, and opening presents. Pajamas. Nowhere to be. I couldn’t imagine a better day.
Mom handed me my Christmas gift. With my new son sitting in my lap, I untied the ribbon and realized it was a new tea cup for my collection. The dainty white porcelain was decorated ornately with gold script, and bore only one word: “Mother”.
That was our last Christmas together, as mom passed away six months later. I look at my “Mother” teacup now as a small porcelain monument to all she gave me. It was Mom that had introduced me to this beautiful tradition many decades ago, sitting across from 11-year old me at the Empress Hotel, explaining clotted cream, having just shepherded me through my first period. She opened my world in a million ways since then. She comforted and guided me in a million ways since, too. She was always warm, always a safe place to land and learn. I hope I can live her example, even a little bit, as a mother to my son. My son: the little boy condemned to a life of tea parties with his mother.
Les Bonnes Adresses
The Empress Hotel (now the Fairmont Empress)
721 Government St
Victoria, BC V8W 1W5, Canada
Phone: +1 250 384 8111
The Connaught Hotel
Carlos Place
London W1K 2AL, United Kingdom
Phone: +44 20 7499 7070
The Mount Nelson Hotel
76 Orange St, Gardens
Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
Phone: +27 21 483 1000