Lift a little finger. It’s time for tea.
Phoebe Cheong and Jude Andam, friends who live on opposite coasts, recently started a tradition when they see each other.
They have tea.
On a recent afternoon, Ms. Andam, a makeup artist in Los Angeles, joined Ms. Cheong, a commercial photographer, at Lady Mendl’s Tea Salon, which occupies the salon floor of a Georgian townhouse in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood.
The two friends may have met for coffee or lunch, but they prefer the more formal experience of tea.
“Coffee shops are informal,” said Ms Andam, 42. “You go in there on your free time or whatever. This is more of a special occasion.”
Ms Cheong, 31, noted the maximalist décor at Lady Mendl’s, with fringed Victorian lampshades and gold leaf on the mouldings. She also appreciated how the waiter announced that the topping for their scones was Devonshire cream.
“There is mystery here, there is storytelling,” Ms Cheong said.
Extensive afternoon tea service is a main attraction at more than a dozen locations in New York and Los Angeles. Bee Brooklyn High Low, which has two locations near Prospect Park, costs $48 for the prix-fixe “Classic” tea service, which lasts 75 minutes. Bee Rose tree house in Pasadena, California, a man in a tuxedo serves cucumber sandwiches and sticky toffee pudding. The three locations in New York of Alice’s teacup have an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ theme.
It’s a curious fact that, in a decidedly rude age when people have become accustomed to arguing with strangers on social media and wearing sweats on planes, this high ritual has made something of a comeback.
A new service in New York, Tea in the city, organizes afternoon tea aboard a pink and white double-decker bus for those keen to take in the sights while sipping organic Earl Gray with lavender. The interior of the bus features soft pink benches instead of the seats you find on a Greyhound.
That rolling parlor joins old standbys known for their elaborate tea sets – a group of establishments that includes The Beverly Hills Peninsula, London’s West Hollywood And The Plaza Hotel. The Palm Court on the Plaza looks much the same as the tea rooms did in the 1920s tables were separated by large palms, creating rooms within a room where guests might feel inclined to share their most intimate thoughts.
Bruce Richardson, the master blender of Elmwood Inn fine tea in Danville, Ky., and the co-author of “A social history of tea,” has been following the tea scene for about 30 years.
“I was just in London last month,” Mr Richardson said. “Boy, every hotel is serving afternoon tea again, even more than twenty years ago. There is a real revival in the number of customers looking for a pleasant tea moment.”
Mr Richardson, 70, put forward a theory about why afternoon tea, which one has become a tradition among the English nobility in the 1840s, has endured into the modern world. “During the tea-making ritual,” he said, “we rediscover our humanity, which has become obscured in the midst of a life that often moves too fast and is filled with too much.”
Honey Moon Udarbe, the owner of Brooklyn High Lowsaid she used to drink tea alone as a kind of escape, and later with her daughters and friends, before opening her first salon in the Prospect Heights neighborhood in 2020.
Business was so good that Ms. Udarbe, 47, recently saw fit to open a second teahouse, twelve blocks away from the original location. The new salon – called Brooklyn High Low, the Parlor – can be found on the ground floor of a brownstone in Park Slope. She calls it a “speak-teasy” because she doesn’t advertise.
“I love this nostalgic moment when you unplug, sit down and talk to people,” Ms. Udarbe said. She went on to say that a tearoom has a lot in common with the corner bar, but it manages to foster a sense of camaraderie “without the booze.”
Mary Fry opened Rose Tree Cottage, a teahouse in Southern California, 50 years ago with her British husband Edward. They created a timeless atmosphere, not only by having Edward don a tuxedo and tails when serving customers, but by ensuring that digital devices have no place at the table.
“Let me say that we are requiring you to turn off your phones,” Mrs. Fry said. “You can’t watch the Dodger game and drink tea. It’s a time to calm yourself and enjoy conversation with family and friends and get yourself to where your brain should be.
Maybe that’s why her salon has been busy lately and she’s noticed a lot of guests in their 20s and 30s. They arrive wearing beautiful hats and fascinators – the formal headgear popularized by Kate Middleton. In the gift shop, Rose Tree Cottage stocks a variety of elaborate hats and fascinators in pink, yellow, green and blue, along with jackets from British clothing manufacturer Barbour.
“My husband called it a sanctuary,” Mrs. Fry said. “It’s a refuge in a crazy, crazy world that’s going on right now. People want to escape with something traditional.”
In a separate interview, Ms. Udarbe made much the same point.
“Really,” she said, “the basis of afternoon tea is time. It’s escaping from the iPhone, or the subway, or your job, or whatever it is that’s confusing you. A lady came in and told me it really is self-care.
Proponents of the trend note that a teahouse is very different from a cafe or restaurant, where you can be overwhelmed by the noise of clattering cutlery or pop music blasting from ceiling speakers.
“Someone has taken the time to make this a setting conducive to great conversations and memories,” said Mr. Richardson, the tea expert. “It could be like entering a cathedral. There’s just a presence you feel there.”
Bee Floating tea house in the mountains on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the tea ceremony has a meditative aspect, influenced by Chinese and Japanese tea culture. Guests are asked to take off their shoes when entering the sparsely decorated room, where they can choose from 67 teas from China. A special service, on Saturday and Sunday, involves sitting on the floor and drinking tea in silence.
“Customers come here out of curiosity and experience something they have never experienced before,” says Elina Medvedeva, the owner. “The energy is so serene.”
No food is served. The idea is spiritual nourishment. “The space I offer you allows you to connect with yourself,” says Ms. Medvedeva, 48.
Although peaceful in its own way, Lady Mendl’s, with its stuffed drawing room furniture, piano and portrait of Queen Elizabeth, evokes a different atmosphere. Tea service, for $78 per person, starts with a selection of teas, followed by snacks including finger sandwiches and scones. The salon guarantees an atmosphere conducive to adult discourse through a policy that prohibits entry to children under 12 years of age.
While social media channels have been buzzing lately with discussions about wars and the upcoming elections, a major debate at the Manhattan drawing room recently centered on the age-old question of what to put on your scone first: clotted cream or jam. At Lady Mendl it is suggested to use the cream first.
Two women at a table in the back were celebrating their pregnancies. Ms Cheong and Ms Andam sat next to the piano and enjoyed cups of Wonderland Rooibos, a type of tea with a hint of chocolate. They talked until closing time of 4pm. Not a single employee floating around pressured them to leave.
“In a coffee shop, everyone is working,” Ms. Andam said as she and her friend stepped out of the quiet townhouse and into the noise of New York. “When will someone take the time to do this?”