Alice's Tea Cup

So one of the request Mom had was to do tea when we're in NY. I searched, I swear.  The first ones came to mind for tea in NY as an out-of-town person would be the Russian Tea Room, Palm Court in the Plaza Hotel. While those are definitely a once in a lifetime experience, we also don't want to be tied down by reservations.

I had found two places that does tea in a casual manner: once was Tea and Sympathy, ran by UK ex-pats.  The other would be Alice's Tea Cup. With a name like that, how can you not want to go in?
You can see that even their menu is Alice in Wonderland themed.  From the funky colors on the wall, to pictures, to quotes painted into the background, everything plays up the tea party. If you ever pay attention, the plates and cups none of them match, which is very Alice of them.  It's very neat, and they have 3 locations, which was convenient for our shopping mission.

They have a food menu with the tea set, and a separate menu just for tea.  The variety they provide is amazing.  I was so overwhelmed that I let our friendly server as our guide.  She helped us narrow down what our mood is good for what.  She suggested Roobios Red Fruit, and a great decision that was.  It is sweet naturally and bring out flavor of our scones.
The tea set, as you can see is more than enough food for two.  They had us picked 3 scones, 2 types of sandwiches, and a dessert.  Can I tell you that on paper it may not sounds like alot, but in reality, it's alot of bread and sugar.

Here's the scone plate. We were able to select 3 types of scones, which are: Chocolate Banana (better than slice bread), Buttermilk Vanilla (their most popular), and Blueberry scone.  First of all, the chocolate banana is not just chocolate chips with random bit of banana in there.  They actually put chocolate chunks and half a banana (ok, maybe a quarter) in there to bake.  So, when you bit into it, you get a real bite of banana, not just a faint taste, or worst flavor or essence of it.  The buttermilk one is very dense, more than I'm used to.  Almost made me regret not getting the pumpkin one.  The blueberry one I knew we can't go wrong, and indeed we were right.

For our sandwiches, we had Watercress Cucumber and Egg Salad.  I just felt that you have to have cucumber sandwiches just to say that you have tea.  The egg salad is really because we haven't had that in years and something to just reminiscence.  Just for kicks, nothing uber special.

For dessert, we were given assorted cookies, and our choice for our dessert was chocolate mousse.  In case you haven't been keeping count, basically, we had bread and bread and left zero room for cookies or the mousse, and unwillingly, we designed our menu to be super dense with flour.  So, even though each of these dishes are super yummy, we just planned it all wrong.

So my tip to you: before you go, check out their menu online, and have an idea of what the selections are.  Plan lightly and not overwhelm yourself.  OR, skip lunch or skip dinner, and you can fully appreciate this meal.  As it should, since the Brits have tea around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, so that they can have dinner at 9pm.  Either way, play accordingly.

Alice's Tea Cup (Chapter II)
156 E. 64th Street
(between Lex & 3rd)
New York, NY 10021
reservation is nice, but not necessary
http://alicesteacup.com/