Today we were at the more traditional, Victoria style tea salon: Adonia Tea House. Here, to try their new festive afternoon tea.
As always, with such a service you start by selecting your desired tea. There was nothing specifically seasonal about their offerings, just their usual comprehensive collection of premium loose leafs divided between fruit, Japanese teas, rooibos, and herb and spice teas.
I would go for their popular Cream Caramel to have with the classic milk and sugar. This is a flavoured rooibos tea with caramel bits and safflower petals for a taste of caramel and cream.
You have two tea set options that vary on size. The mini afternoon tea is a curated 8 bites and the afternoon tea, that we had, contains 12 items at $56 per person. As the menu is flexible for dietary restrictions, and changes based on availability, it is not listed. Instead they have a menu of their regular creations so that you may also order what you like a la carte.
The assortment is all homemade and it includes finger sandwiches, pastries, and scones to accompany your choice of tea.
I go from savoury to sweet with scones as an elective. I also try to start from the lightest bite and work my way to the most flavourful. Therefore grabbed the cucumber sandwich first. The classic cucumber and cream cheese. I knew what I was getting, but still would have liked more cream to flavour and to combat the dry bread.
I got more cream with the simple egg salad sandwich with its nice peppery finish.
I liked the flavourful turkey and pesto sandwich, as I found it the punchiest item. Although, everything was designed to accommodate the gentle nature of tea.
The Croissants also had turkey, but I got mostly sweet jam from it.
The second layer had an eggy quiche with sweet caramelized onion and a crumble crust.
The roasted sweet potato in the salad could have used a longer time in the oven. I found it especially hard amongst the greens.
Similarly, I was not a fan of the beef brisket crostini. By the time we worked our way from the bottom layer to the second, the meat was cold and the bread tough. Texturally it was my least favourite.
On the top tier were three desserts and what really made the tea set festive. There was a golden caramel cake. The reindeer cake was the cutest in a blueberry and pomegranate mousse. It looked wintery, but tasted like summer berries. And the ornament was a bite of black Forrest cake.
On the side, on a separate plate, we had a strawberry panna cotta, because it didn’t all fit on the tray. This was my favourite of the desserts for its light airy texture, however not all that warming for winter.
They shared the plate with two scones that we were asked to cut in half and share ourselves, which I found odd and would have liked a whole scone of each flavour myself. The savoury one was a cheese and chives and the sweet, a Madagascar vanilla bean. Both served with the traditional jam and clotted cream spread.
In short this was a lovely was to catch up with a friend, over a large variety of small bites to keep your palate as interesting as your conversations. However, not all that wintery or holiday driven as I expected from an advertised seasonal afternoon tea.
Adonia Tea House
2057 W 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC V6M 1Y7
(604) 261-0049
adoniatea.com
