January 2025

If a venue could score all the points, this one would do it. However, my afternoon tea reviews also consider the food so this one doesn’t score as high as you’d think. Stay tuned until the end for my final star rating. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the yummy of afternoon tea at Rail Car 91 tea room within the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach Florida.

We begin, as always with the good aspects and this one is easy b/c its the stunning venue. This tea room is in the pavilion beside the main building of the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum. This building houses the rail car and is quite stunning! The view of the marina is gorgeous, the windows are large and bright and the greenery is lovely.  This pavilion also houses the rail car itself which you can walk through.  The tableware here is very colourful and pretty. They call it the “whitehall collection china”; I’m not sure if that means anything to purveyors of fine china. It doesn’t mean anything to me as a known china brand but I thought it was quite pretty. So this venue is certainly THE good aspect of this afternoon  tea experience.

For The Bad

The scones here were by far the worst part. But also the tea too. Let’s discuss both.

Starting with the tea itself. There are no tea options and everyone receives their house blend which is called “Whitehall special blend” made by Harney and Sons. This is a reputable tea brand. Besides having no tea options, the tea came pre-steeped to our table but it was not strong enough. It was like drinking warm swamp water and we could not discern any tea flavours in the cup. I asked if it was a black tea and was told it was. It didn’t taste like anything. If you’re going to serve something called “afternoon tea” you need to know how to brew tea and there should be more than one tea “option” available to guests.  We were also given a glass of pink berry lemonade which tasted nice.

Now onto the second bad aspect of the scone or lack thereof.  We were each served one biscuit/slash/cookie type medallion that they refer to as a cranberry orange scone.  I saw on the menu that scones was plural and that there appeared to be space on the plate for another two scones so I asked if we were missing two scones. We were not. Each guest gets ONE of these flat disks.  They are served with lemon curd, strawberry jam, and see this menu where it says Clotted Cream and the server who delivered our food said it’s their FAMOUS clotted cream. Well, you won’t be surprised to learn that this was NOT clotted cream. This was a cream cheese, sugar, probably icing sugar, and mascarpone mixture. You won’t be surprised to learn, or hear yet again, that this absolutely infuriates me. Do not make your own concoction of white coloured ingredients and call it clotted cream. Absolute blasphemy to all us afternoon tea queens and kings. Good lordy; what are they thinking?!!?

The flat disks called scones did not taste good. Of course they didn’t split well b/c they were so small. The toppings weren’t really necessary b/c these were no larger nor thicker than a cookie. They had that infamous Florida after taste that I don’t enjoy. Overall, the scone was a huge huge huge FAIL.

For the Ugly,
I rarely have an ugly aspect but I found one here! Given the absolute gorgeousness of this venue the arrival of our tiered plate was extremely lack lustre. You may have heard the saying “We eat with our eyes first” and this presentation was just ugly. It did not delight me in any way.  There were large gaps of white space between the food items, nothing to fancy up the tiers what so ever. Florida is famous for serving edible flowers on their tiers: none of be had here.  Florida also grows fruit, a few pops of colour of fruit would be nice, right? Anyway, given how lovely this venue is, the presentation of this food was ugly and did not match the venue, at least for me. Also, check out the photo of the food from their website… hello, do the scones in this photo match the mini disc scones we received? I think not. Oh, and I see a yellow flower and a raspberry in this photo. I call this false advertising in terms of food presentation. How very disappointing.

Onwards to The Yummy,

The best bite was the chocolate brownie. It was fudgy and tasty.  We also each got a macaron and cream puff filled with whipped cream. Both of these items are throw away items for me b/c they can be purchased in bulk, by anyone, from costco or the like. They are not special so I needed more from the dessert tier here to bring it to the level of a classy afternoon tea to match this venue. But as I said, the chocolate brownie was the yummiest bite we had here.

The savoury sandwiches were also decent. We each got a tuna salad & apple finger sandwich, a ham and cheese finger sandwich, a cucumber cream cheese, a turkey cheese and spinach, and an egg salad finger sandwich. So five finger sandwiches is a reasonable count. The bread for the most part was fresh on all of these items. The filings all tasted good.  At this price point I would have liked to see some variety in terms of savouries like a quiche or puff pastry or at least some differing types of bread but of all the things we were served, the savouries were the least problematic for me. There’s something for everyone on this tier; thankfully!

So onto the price which would also be a bad aspect for this sad afternoon tea we were served. For non-members of the museum, this afternoon tea costs: $75 USD per person ($150 for two people) At the current exchange rate that’s about  $110 CAD per person (or $220 CAD for 2 ppl)

That includes the tea, tax, gratuity, AND the mandatory entry fee to the museum which costs $28 for adults alone. (making this tea cost $47 per person).  We did tour a few rooms of the museum house which was fine but not something we would ever visit so having to pay for it just to attend the afternoon tea is certainly not MY preference. Unless you are already visiting this museum b/c you want to attend the museum, I would certainly say this afternoon tea as a stand alone experience is certainly one you can skip.

Based on my entire experience, the price, the poorly made tea, the pitiful scone and sweets, my queen of afternoon tea rating is 1.5 out of 5 stars - could be argued that it could be up to 2 stars but I’m very salty about calling their clotted cream something that wasn’t even close to clotted cream so I’ll stick with my 1.5 rating.  Have you been to Flagler for Afternoon Tea? Is it one you’d attend if you’re ever in Palm beach?  Comment below and subscribe and follow for future tea room reviews.