January 2025
This is the good, the bad, the ugly and the yummy of afternoon tea Oakville Ontario edition
A couple weeks ago, we had afternoon tea for two guests at Nyla’s Room referred to as a” Tea Room, Gelato & Espresso Café.” The last time I had this tea experience was over two and a half years ago (well before tiktok & youtube reviews) so I was looking forward to seeing how it had changed.
We commence with THE GOOD. The food here is good and appears to all be house-made.
We each got 3 different savouries, and two of each item. For each guest, Two cucumber cream cheese and two egg salad. Then I had two turkey rolls and my tea friend had 2 smoked salmon rolls. I would prefer 4 or 5 different savory options instead of 3 x 2. But more importantly, the breads were fresh and all 3 items tasted good. These were the same items served when I was here almost 3 years ago.
Spoiler alert: I’ll save the scones for the Yummy section of this review!
For sweets each guest received a cream puff in the shape of a swan, an amaretti cookie and a large lemon tart. These three sweets all tasted good and we were told they were made in house. I liked that the cream puff had pastry cream inside and was not entirely whipped cream. The lemon tart was very tart in flavour and I enjoyed that. The amaretti cookie provided an enjoyable difference in texture but I wished there was a chocolate item, as I always do. Last time I was here there were more sweets: 4 sweets plus two chocolate truffles. And we got to choose a scoop of gelato which I enjoyed. I asked about serving gelato during this visit, and was told they usually do but they forgot to offer it to us. So I dunno if that’s so - if you go here for afternoon tea you can comment below as to if you were freely offered gelato with your afternoon tea.
So anyway, overall, the food here was good b/c it was fresh, diverse enough, and tasted pleasing.. Moving on!
The bad - I’m classifying the tea here as not ideal. You choose a tea from this lazy susan (thats what we call it in my canadian household) from these shaker jars that many ppl and their noses will have touched. Not a huge fan of that and even smelling them wasn’t helpful. For this to work, you’d need to replace the tea samples every few weeks; these ones smelled less than fresh so a menu description of the tea options would be preferable. They serve the Sloane brand of tea which is a reasonable quality tea common in Ontario canada. I chose earl grey cream and my tea friend chose “Oolong cream” which to her just tasted like earl grey cream; maybe it was supposed to but I looked it up on the slone website and it didnt say anything about bergamot flavour so I dunno? The tea pots were not adequately filled full of water, not sure why, so we had to keep asking for more hot water. I had to ask for Milk and then had to get up and ask for sugar when I noticed it wasn’t on the table already. Anyway, the tea situation wasn’t my personal favourite here. Certainly could’ve been smoother.
I won’t go into the details or describe my feelings about the service here b/c TT is full of new 2025 snowflakes who god forbid, are easily offended even when I use even the mildest of adjectives, so suffice it to say the service, on this visit, was the least enjoyable aspect of this afternoon tea experience but I’ll keep those details and opinions to myself and you can go and experience it for yourself.
The Ugly. Nothing was overtly ugly here. They’ve made some visual improvements to their small cafe space (new paint, new wall art, extra silk flowers etc.) since I was here last so marks for effort. However, this venue doesn’t score high on my personal ambiance scale but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was ugly.
And finally the yummy - I am so happy to report that the scone tier was the yummiest! The scone tier this time was the same as my last visit. We each received two scones. A savory cheese scone and a blueberry scone. They were served with shared bowls of strawberry jam and house-made clotted cream. I also asked for butter knowing I’d want that for the savoury scone; the butter was readily available and wasn’t rock cold. bonus! We asked for the details on what “house made clotted cream” means here and I can confirm it is being made in the proper method (see my clotted cream playlist on TT for that method). We were told that on this day, the process got a bit mixed up so it was a bit more whipped than it should appear. However, the flavour was authentic. The scones themselves were very buttery and absolutely delicious. If you like a drier dense scone, this isn’t that. But these scones were easily 10 out of 10, for me and my preference in scones. Certainly the yummy here was the scones for my particular taste buds.
This afternoon tea costs $55 per person which is slightly higher than other similar afternoon tea places in Ontario but outside of Toronto. This is the same price as 3 years ago; and at that time that would’ve been well overpriced so it’s good they haven’t raised their price… b/c they don’t need to, to align with other tea rooms in this area. A deposit of $10 per person was required to be pre-paid online when booking in advance.
B/c of my inquisition on the clotted cream I was asked who I was and explained that with my friend, we create the Ontario Tea Room journal. I was told that my last visit inspired them to focus more on their afternoon tea and less on their gelato shop.
Based on all aspects important to me, I would rate this afternoon tea experience as 3.8 out of 5 stars; very respectable. So if you’re in the area, I would recommend you book afternoon tea here in Oakville if you like a casual cafe vibe. Another tea room that’s great for kids and their kids version of afternoon tea costs $40.
