The Tea Rooms

andybrown

Better than Ronseal 19th March 2009

3 found this helpful

Not as widely travelled as I'd like, even within London, I am sure there are better places than Stoke Newington Church Street to take tea in the afternoon, I just don't know any of them, and they aren't on my doorstep.

So when I read from a helpful chap called Tim Eout (is that a French name?) that there's a new place opened and it demands my presence for a spot of chai and cakey, I can hardly get on my bike fast enough - besides, it was a quiet afternoon, I was sick of annotating chapter six hundred and god-only-knows-what of some interminable history book, and I wanted cake.
I expected a certain degree of competence because there are plenty of decent cafes on Church Street and none but a fool would open a new one without something going for it.
With a name like The Tea Rooms, it wasn't too much to hope for a decent brew, somewhere to sit, bla bla bla.
What I got, rather marvellously, was the full bloody monty. Loose-leaf, and extra water on the side, and tablecloths, and a slightly crazy staring woman in the corner, and students reading on couches, and a slice of surprisingly subtle chocolate and almond cake.

I suppose in a more innocent or perhaps more particular age you'd expect proper tea and cakes and a solicitous sales assistant and a generally benign air of quietude, but this is not that age, so to experience all of those things, in an almost archetypal, unpretentious, relaxed tea room was, while not a revelation, certainly a delight.

Wheely at 20/03/09

You make a convincing case for the humble Tea Rooms of yesteryear. ! Is this the come-back age of that wonderful Victorian institution - "to take tea" ? Good review.

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