Home sweet home! Shaun and I are back from Cali and catching up on rest this week. It was a busy but fun week and one of my favorite activities was enjoying tea at The Huntington Library.
The LA area actually has lots of tea places that I’m sure we’ll slowly work our way through but I selected this location for our afternoon tea so we could enjoy the library and gardens and have an all day adventure vs just tea. One unique aspect to tea at The Huntington is the food is served via buffet.
Reservations are recommended and even though we went during the week the tea room was packed when we arrived so I’m glad I booked our spot a few weeks in advance. We were quickly seated and brought a basket of scones. Unfortunately the tea selection was very limited but luckily I enjoyed the signature rose tea while Shaun had the blackberry.
The buffet offered tea sandwiches ( chicken salad, tuna salad, cucumber mint, ginger carrot, salmon, and egg salad) a few salads, cheese and crackers, tea bread, fruit and assorted desserts. The salmon was both of our favorites but I enjoyed all the tea sandwiches ( except tuna, but I don’t eat tuna – for all I know it’s excellent at TheHuntington) and we each had seconds of some of our favorite sandwiches. The scones were disappointing , which was a bummer because scones are typically my favorite part, but did come with a nice assortment of toppings.
For dessert, as you can tell I went the mostly chocolate route but there was also lemon bars, pecan bars, tea cookies and other cupcake flavors available. The desserts were not bad but not great, I wound up just having in a bite of each item – I’m ok with this though because I love tea sandwiches and filled up on those.
We were in the tea room for a little over an hour but didn’t feel rushed to leave. Because it’s a lot of people in one room it’s a little loud and I wish the windows looking out to the rose garden were a bit larger but all in all the ambience was nice. Not frilly and all you can eat makes this much more of a male friendly tea experience.
The price for tea was $31 / person plus tax and tip – plus the $23/ person library admission. I think price for each is fair but yes, it does make the total visit a bit of an expensive day. After tea we walked the gardens for 3.5 hours and felt a little rushed, this is easily a full day adventure.
I wore my new tea dress from the Alice Through the Looking Glass collection by LC Lauren Conrad at Kohls, while this dress was lovely for the tea indoors it was not the best choice for walking around in the garden all day, but I think it still looked cute.
Here’s a better pic to see the print (taken in front of the Japanesse Tea House)
I love theme dressing and thought this dress was so on point but this girl showed up half-way through our tea and I had to sneak a pic
This dress was BEAUTIFUL but damn it must have been hot, I hope this young lady went home after her tea. But I can’t even be upset I was out dressed because she looked so gorgeous. Guess I gotta step it up next time!