December 2024
Warning - this review triggers my clotted cream nerve!
The good, the bad, the ugly, the yummy, of afternoon tea, chicago tea tour final stop!
Our last stop on this tea tour was at tealula in parkridge IL which is close to OHare airport in Chicago IL. usa
The good - this tea room was really pretty. I liked the blue tones here and the contemporary ambiance. The design is clean and streamlined and I was a fan of it. They have a full loose leaf tea shop beside the tea room so there are many tea options. Their printed menu gives a selection of 10 options but you can have any tea from their shop. I had cream earl grey and my tea friend was given a choice of several caffeine free teas and she chose an apricot black tea. The tea here was pre-steeped before it arrived to our table so we didn’t have to bother with tea bags or strainers, that was nice. Both teas tasted good.
We were served a cute mini tea cup of tomato red pepper soup here with a bocchini cheese ball in the centre. It was really tasty.
All of these aspects were very good.
I’ll go onto the describe the rest of the food now. For savouries we each received 4sandwich like items and one won ton crisp. One tzatziki with a sliver of cucumber, One chicken salad, One ham frittata on a bread round, and a beef and brussels sprouts toast. My tea guest had smoked salmon instead of the chicken salad that was swapped out for me who doesn’t like it. These savories were acceptable. All open faced which I have seen before but it is not common for all items to be open faced. They could have mixed it up by providing 1 or 2 as regular finger sandwiches to add some variety. The tzatziki one was my least favourite, the ratio was off for me. The chicken salad was okay. The frittata one was okay, kind of odd to me eating cold egg in this way, but not horrible. My fav savory was the beef one as the brussels slaw under it had some garlic which tasted lovely. Overall, the savory tier was acceptable but nothing was outstanding.
The bad - I am classifying the scone situation here as bad. Each guest did receive two scones (one plain and one cinnamon) so that was great to see. And we had shared pots of lemon curd, cream cheese, and berry jam. My tea guest had already warned me that the creamy mixture was cream cheese and barely sweetened at all which did not interest me but I decided to try it anyhow. It was not tasty; I don’t like scones covered in cream cheese, scones are not bagels. What makes this even more egregious is that they called this creamy stuff “clotted cream” on the menu provided. This drives me crazy b/c it just adds to the confusion and elusiveness of authentic clotted cream. People this was not clotted cream so don’t be fooled by this! Watch my clotted cream playlist to learn more about real clotted cream and to hear me go on and on about how it should always be served at something called afternoon tea.
The scone was crumbly and had that same after taste that doesn’t impress me. The lemon curd tasted house made and tasted pretty good. But overall, I only ate one scone and wasn’t interested in eating the second one. It just wasn’t very tasty to me so for me personally, I’ve classified the scone situation as the first bad aspect, certainly impacted by their cream cheese being called Clotted cream on the menu. ugh.
Less egregious but I’d also classify the sweets here as fairly bad or at least disappointing. We each got two sweets; a cannoli cream puff and a tiramisu cup. There was a couple berries and a peeled mandarin orange as garnish on the plate. Both of the desserts tasted pretty much the same; cream with soft cake. No crispy textures, no fruity flavours, no chocolate, nothing indulgent. Very blah. Again, this is my personal preference. If you like light airy creamy sweets in the count of two, this would be ideal for you. I consider afternoon tea to be a special dining experience and the sweet tier is a great way for tea rooms to make it special in some way, so for me, I found these ones disappointing and underwhelming.
The ugly - Nothing here was ugly. I enjoyed this contemporary venue.
The yummy My favourite bite was the starter soup and the beef savory. I really wish more of this had been yummy and tasty and special.
This afternoon tea costs $55 USD per person which is $77 CAD. This price might be fine if real clotted cream was served and two additional sweets that are delicious and add some variety. Otherwise, I’d say this is overpriced especially for being outside downtown chicago. Based on all these things, my queen of afternoon tea rating is 2.5 out of 5 - maybe more like 2.8 if I did more specific ratings given the nice venue and ample tea selections available from their tea shop. But I’m probably a bit salty over the disappointing sweets and that they are calling cream cheese “clotted cream” adding to the confusion about this elusive scone accompaniment. I said what I said. I am hoping for better teas on the next two tea tours; links in bio to donate or find out where I’ll be heading!
