Scarlet Tea Room (Pasadena)

This is a really belated post from one of my trips to LA last month. To celebrate my sister S's graduation, we went to The Scarlet Tea Room in Pasadena. Overall, we all thought the room was beautiful, the service lovely, the food good and generously portioned, some of the teas lovely, and that it's a nice splurge.

The first course was a fresh strawberry sorbet, which we all appreciated after coming in from 0 degree heat. If they hadn't started us off with this I don't know how anyone would have been able to drink hot tea.

Chihuly! A lovely glass blown chandelier to admire while we waited for our food. For those who are wondering why this looks familiar, Chihuly did the famous chandeliers in the Bellagio Las Vegas.

I wish STR had more frilly Victorian English tea sets, but a girl can't be too picky. The teas themselves were fine. My favorite was a chocolate mint, because I've rarely had good chocolate flavor tea. Theirs was lightly fragranced and perfect with just a little sugar.

The strawberry preserves and lemon curd were just okay, but the whipped cream was really delicious. It doesn't make up for their not having clotted cream, though!

Then, the three-tiered snack plates came out! Sandwiches, scones, and more sandwiches! I would say I liked about half the sandwiches, but that's a personal preference. I'm sure everyone would like some and dislike others, but it's not like you get to pick and choose. In general, I like the simple classics: smoked salmon, cucumber/dill, apple/walnut/chevre, etc.

THE BIG WIN: The Scarlet Tea Room takes home the blue ribbon when it comes to scones. These were out of this world delicious: tender, flakey, buttery, wow. I am a scone lover, and I wish I could have taken home a dozen. And yes, they were still good the next morning. Since when is that true of scones?! The chocolate chip ones were especially delicious, and chocolate chip scones are usually cloying to me. The currant ones were also great.

The first dessert course was a refreshing bowl of diced strawberries with a little Chambord, topped with a slightly yogurty whipped cream. Perhaps it was creme fraiche or sour cream with brown sugar.

By the time the petit fours came out, we were all quite full. And honestly, these were fun but nothing to write home about. It's too bad they didn't shine. Every other afternoon tea I've been to has had better petit fours, I'm sad to say.

A PLUS: The Scarlet Tea Room did not skimp on the tea. It really annoys me when afternoon tea places have limits on the number of refills you can get on a pot of tea, or when the server will purposely come by at very long intervals so that you essentially are forced to sit there without a tea refill. C'mon, it's mostly water, and how much tea can an average person drink anyway? The Scarlet Tea Room was not only generous and timely with tea refills, they brewed each pot in the kitchen and then brought out the pot without and leaves sitting in the pot. Hence, no bitter tea no matter how slowly we drank.

A MINUS: Maybe this goes hand in hand with the great service and unlimited tea, but we had a party of ten and we were forced to purchase ten four course tea sets when seven or eight would have been more than enough. We took home a big box of sandwiches and another of petit fours. Which was fine, but it meant our table spent an unnecessary $100. But c'est la vie. When you're a big group, sometimes you don't get to be picky!