Tea
Hello, you are watching London TV with me Lesley Collier. Coming up next, get your drinking pinkies at the ready, it’s Tea time…
Us Brits down 165 million cups of tea each day, and the terribly British custom of afternoon tea was started around 1840 by one of Queen Victoria’s ladies in waiting who wanted to bridge the gap between luncheon and dinner. So with a new tea shop springing up just metres from St Paul’s cathedral, we thought we’d get along to meet London’s own Mr Tea, who says that anyone who drinks coffee is a crazy fool!
I think a lot of the old fashioned teashops are exactly that, old fashioned, what we’ve tried to do is to give tea a modern 21st Century twist, so using lose leaf, not teabags, infusing it very quickly using temperature controlled filtered water. The brief on the design was Victorian tearoom with a contemporary twist. I think in London you have two ends of the spectrum you have tea at the Ritz which is £40 per person plus an 8 week waiting list, or you have your greasy spoon café serving a pot of tea with a piece of toast, I would like to think that we fit somewhere in between. This is a silver needle with red Amaranth flower, it’s effectively silver needle tea that is hand tied around a red amaranth flower and as the tea hits the water the leaves expand revealing the beautiful flower inside. Not only does it look great but it tastes absolutely delicious, so it’s certainly one of my favourite teas and one of our best sellers.
Tea is open 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday. I whole heartedly recommend the Moroccan mint. The nearest tube is St. Paul’s.
So if you got out your A-Zs and stopped at Tea, let London TV show you where to go next. Tune in to the monthly What’s On show to find out more. See you then.
