Afternoon Tea

Afternoon tea is one of my favorite things to do.  When I lived in The Bay Area and I was in charge of throwing a birthday party, a shower or a plain ole girls' get together, you could always count on me to host afternoon tea at The Ritz-Carlton San Francisco.  There's something so relaxing about enjoying a cup of tea and scones with clotted cream (you can't forget the clotted cream) with your girlfriends.  And of course you can't find a more elegant atmosphere than The Ritz.  Ah but I digress...thoughts of San Francisco are thoughts for another day.  Truly though, I really do love tea.  I once went through a phase where I was obsesed with loose leaf tea. I'd get different types and flavors, I got metal cannisters to store the different flavors and I got every tea-related accessory I could find.  These days I'm back to regular tea bags, and I even gave away tea sachets from my favorite tea maker Harney & Sons Fine Tea as favors at my wedding.  Moral of the story = I really like tea.

Afternoon Tea at the shopping plaza where I frequent quite often has a tearoom/restaurant, a small bakery where you can get fresh pastries/desserts to go, and a shop across the way that sells a lot of cute tea, lunch/bento and kitchen-related merchandise.  I constantly have to restrain myself from buying everything in sight at the shop.  I would absolutely love to buy a lunch set from Afternoon Tea (food containers, thermos, chopsticks, musubi holder, ice pack - depicted in the picture to the left), but for one thing I don't have anywhere to take it and for another, the containers really don't hold much food at all (that's probably a good thing).  Although, my new favorite website is a site "dedicated to the subject of simple bento lunches," both traditional and not so traditional.  I've already found some recipes I want to try and I really think I need to get some cute bento containers to put my creations in.

Given that I like tea, it is a little strange that it's taken me 6 months to visit Afternoon Tea.  Recently, my friend and I were arranging to meet up for coffee and although I suggested Starbucks for lack of something better, in the back of my head I knew there was somewhere I wanted to try but I couldn't think of it.  To my delight, she responded "how about Afternoon Tea?"  We met at Afternoon Tea and both got the Cream Tea Set which comes with a pot of tea and two scones (complete with fruit preserves and cream).  I ordered chai tea which was perfect.  I have since been back and tried their signature Afternoon Tea blend which I also really liked.  Since it was lunchtime, people around us were ordering actual meals (pasta and salads) which, as is customary here, looked delicious and impeccable.  On my next visit, I plan to try one of their meal sets and I'll report back.