Since October, I’ve been on a creepy TV show run. I zoomed through both seasons of “The Devil’s Hour” on Amazon Prime, and I’m rewatching the vampire thriller “The Strain” on Hulu. Completing the trio of creepy watches is “From,” a supernatural drama on MGM+ about a strange town overrun by monsters and other weird phenomena.
The situation in “From” is perpetually bleak, but no matter how bad things get Mrs. Liu, who runs the town’s diner, always believes that tea will solve it. You’re hearing voices? Tea. Monsters attacked your house? Tea. Something about the ritual of sipping tea seems like a panacea, even if it’s only a temporary one.
This led me on a journey to revel in a bit of afternoon tea, a ritual that consists of two key elements: Your own pot of tea and a multilevel display of finger foods. Prices can vary wildly, from the cost of two movie tickets to a few hundred dollars. Here are a few options from the affordable to the fancy.
A nontraditional DIY option
Though it’s not a true afternoon tea, you can get pretty close to the real thing by snatching a table at the cozy West Village location of Te Company, where you can enjoy tea by the pot or by the $43 flight — I went for the Oriental Beauty, Wild Chrysanthemum and Formosa Dragon teas — over deftly executed desserts. The pineapple linzer cookie is the cafe’s most popular offering, but if I were to do it all again, I’d just order several slices of the impossibly moist pineapple cake, two scallion biscuits with tiny dried shrimp and the crumbly shortbread cookies. If there’s a bit of a wait, pop into the Three Lives & Company bookstore across the street. You might find something to read over tea.
An influencer tea for normies
For an authentic afternoon tea on a budget try Little Hen, a micro-chain of flowery restaurants that arrived in New York earlier this year. If you were to judge it by its Instagram presence, you might think Little Hen was designed for influencers by influencers. But the crowd it attracts at its Greenwich Village location is surprisingly normal. Looking around the carefully appointed dining room, I saw mothers with young daughters and groups of girlfriends enjoying a quiet moment over beflowered china.
For $38 to $58 per person — the price goes up if you add a glass of Prosecco or champagne — you’ll get an individual pot of tea; a flight of finger sandwiches, including chicken salad, tuna salad and salmon and cucumber; warm scones served with jam, butter and clotted cream; and, at the very top of the tower, macarons and chocolates. It all adds up to a surprisingly cheap way to enjoy an afternoon. Just be sure to make a reservation because walk-ins tend to be turned away.
Where you pay for the room
On the opposite end of affordable is afternoon tea at the storied Russian Tea Room, tucked behind Carnegie Hall since 1929. A search of the Tea Room on Getty Images pulls up portraits of Burt Reynolds, Billy Idol, Barbara Walters and Fran Leibowitz (smoking, of course), recalling a time when it was a place to see and be seen.
The Tea Room still depends on that legacy as well as its faded opulence to legitimize the cost of afternoon tea, which starts at $145 per person (though you’re allowed to split that cost and I highly recommend that you do). The set menu includes a glass of champagne, Prosecco or sparkling cider, a tall glass pitcher of hot tea to pour into a tall glass cup with a metal handle, and a mixed bag of small bites — yes to the curried chicken salad, smoked salmon and the mini croque-monsieur, never again to the rubbery steak on a baguette — followed by a dessert platter of warmed scones, cupcakes and a mini crème brûlée that is better than it has any right to be. Between the cheap framed prints try to spot the very real Picassos, a Chagall and a Matisse. Is it an absolutely perfect afternoon tea? No. But it’s certainly a chance to take in the last of a dying breed of New York City restaurants.
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