December 2024

The good, the bad, the ugly and the yummy of afternoon tea Milton Ontario edition.

A couple weeks ago we had afternoon tea for two guests at The Escarpment Tea Room in Milton Ontario. This is my second time coming here; the last time was about 14 months ago. Lets dive right in, shall we?

I did make a video review from that visit early on in this account. Not much has changed from my first visit but let’s dive into this review shall we?

Beginning with the positives, the good - the food here was good. 

But let’s mention the tea. Each guest chooses a tea from 8 tea options. Not a huge selection but we were both able to find a tea we wanted to have. It was loose leaf proper tea with milk in proper pitchers, so we’re off to a good start here.

Heading into the food, there was great variety and everything was fresh. The food here is served in two parts, your savouries and then your scones and sweets on a second tier.  For savouries, we each received 7 savoury bites and we had a plate of veggies and dip to share. The dip was under-seasoned and tasted just like plain sour cream. The veggies were veggies. In terms of savoury bites we each had a classic cucumber cream cheese fingers sandwich, a turkey triangle, a veggie roll wrap, an egg salad, a quiche and a brie and cranberry on a half scone. My tea friend had a salmon roll sandwich (seen here) and I had a second egg salad instead of the salmon.  The sandwiches all tasted fresh and good. I remember really liking the veggie roll wrap last time b/c it had asparagus in in but this time mine only had spinach and apple. I did hear the table besides us comment that that there’s had asparagus, lucky them! This time I enjoyed the quiche as it was different than bread sandwiches and tasted good.

Next we like to eat our scones.  Here we each received one scone and we had a shared pot of strawberry jam and REAL clotted cream to share. If you’ve been watching my reviews for any duration of time, You know I prefer when each guest is served two scones at afternoon tea and I don’t love sharing my accompaniments but at least it was real clotted cream, hooray! My tea guest and I both agreed that the scone tasted good. It was on the dense side but was fresh and tasted very good. A second scone would have been the cat’s meow even if we did end up taking it home.

For sweets we each received, a victoria sponge like cake, the brown cookie was I think a mincemeat cookie for the holidays,, a shortbread cookie, a rice krispie square and chocolate covered strawberry. The quantity of sweets was ample at 5 per guest. Always love seeing a chocolate covered strawberry albeit this one was small being out of season for such berries. The sponge cake with the fresh fruit on top was our favourite sweet bite. The other 3 cookies weren’t so great. The shortbread had an odd after taste, the ___cookie didn’t hit my palette nicely, and a rice krispie square, especially this small is too casual for afternoon tea. Overall, the sweets were fine in count at 5 but didn’t make me fall in love.

However, overall,, the food here is being classified as good.

The bad and the ugly can be done together here and it’s this venue. This tea room is in the front part of a cultural centre about 10 minutes outside downtown Milton. It’s just a very odd place for afternoon tea. The room is small with not a lot of natural light. Tables are close together. It feels like grandma has setup a tea room in the living room and dining room of her small bungalow.  Its just not my vibe. As far as i know this is the second owner of this tea room and this owner took over 1-2 years ago and has made some improvements but overall, you wouldn’t go to afternoon tea here b/c of the venue. It does not add anything to the experience and makes this a very casual feeling tea experience..  The service on this day was okay, our server was a bit awkward but managed to provide an adequate level of service, nothing stellar though.

And finally the Yummy - I’d classify the victoria sponge cake and the scone as the best bites here. The savouries and scones outperformed the sweets leaving me a bit discontented.

This afternoon tea, which they refer to incorrectly as ‘high tea’ in several places like their menu, costs $37 canadian per person (which is about 26 USD per person). This price is on the low end for afternoon tea in this part of ontario so that’s very fair; price definitely wouldn’t stop you from enjoying afternoon tea here! This tea room is listed in our Ontario Tea Rooms Journal and they also have a few copies for sale here.

Overall, given the food, venue, and price I am scoring this afternoon tea as 3.5 out of 5 stars, closer to 4 so let’s say 3.8, shall we? If you’re in the area, you should take a friend and have a casual tea experience. Dont forget to book in advance. This would also be a good venue to take children who are learning about afternoon tea; they even have a children’s version of tea for $22 per.