February 2025

I am still on my Florida tea tour. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the yummy of afternoon tea; Florida tea tour st. pete’s edition. There was something very surprising about this afternoon tea so stay tuned for that.  We’ve crossed back over to the West side of Florida and had afternoon tea at The Chattaway in St. Petersburg. 

As always, starting with the good. There are two aspects here. First I am going to give a nod to the tea room itself. I loved the blue coloured room, and all the tea-ware & ea cups, and china all over. There were little placards with positive quotes that were fun to read. While it’s certainly not fancy, I thought this was a fun room to have tea in. Casual and fun and me keeping it positive.

Second, This venue served real clotted cream and I was so surprised! This tea room actually serves crumpets and their version of a scone and with it you get a helping of raspberry jam, lemon curd, and legit clotted cream to share. Clotted cream is fairly elusive everywhere, especially in Florida so I was thrilled to see it being served here.  The crumpets were lovely and quite a nice change; I welcomed them.  The scone itself was a muffin texture so not sconey-enough for me but still better than it being a tiny biscuit like our last tea in the miami area. The surprising aspect was being served real clotted cream; how lovely and definitely a good aspect here.

The other food was passable as well.  We got to choose our 3 sandwich types when we pre-booked our tea time and we got two fingers of each type.  Our chosen types were: roast beef and cheddar, turkey and provolone, and cucumber. Although there were only 3 types and all just bready finger sandwiches I did appreciate that they were cut neatly, different shapes or different bread to add a tiny bit of variety.  The breads were fresh and the meats and cucumber all tasted good.

For the sweets tier, we each received a heart shaped sugar cookie, maybe for valentines day which was coming up, a pistachio macaron, and a chocolate cheesecake bite. I actually tried the macaron here which I often don’t bother with, b/c it looked house-made or maybe just not a costco one. It was okay, kinda mushy - I still didn’t love it as far as a macarons go. The chocolate cheese cake bite tasted good. I love a little bit of chocolate at afternoon tea. The sugar cookie was meh for me. Pretty dry.  Overall, these sweets were very mid and in no way knocked my socks off.  

Moving onto the Bad - the bad here was the tea; in that we didn’t get to make any tea choice. We were served one pot of Tetley tea, quite likely orange pekoe.  The tea bags were still in the pot as you can clearly see. So at least we could make nice strong cups of black tea. At afternoon tea, I believe guests should get to choose their own tea from numerous tea options and the tea served should be a quality brand, not a grocery store tea bag. The tea was easily the bad aspect here.

For The Ugly - As I said at the beginning I liked the room where we were served tea; it felt like a quaint team room venue. Very appropriate. But this restaurant or road side cafe is more of a burger, sandwich, and salad joint. They have a full menu and most people were eating outside on the garden patio. We drove around the streets a little bit before waiting for our reservation time and this did not appear to be in a touristy part of the town but I can see it being particularly popular with locals. Afternoon tea is certainly not their bread and butter here so I was surprised they pulled off a respectable afternoon tea… WITH real clotted cream too-boot!  The service and staff situation here was just OK but I am not going to go into details so no-one gets offended. This isn’t a high end hotel that prides themselves on red carpet service; this is a casual garden patio with a cute room for tea tucked away behind it. It is what it is.

This afternoon tea cost $45 USD per person which is about $64 CAD. This is a high price for a venue such as this. Although I am not familiar with the competition for afternoon tea in this town or area, this afternoon tea should cost about $25-$30 USD per person based on the lack of tea options, the portion size, sweet & scone quality, and the venue itself. Based on my experience, on the day we went, my Queen of Afternoon Tea rating is 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Have you been to The Chattaway for afternoon tea? Will you be adding it to your florida tea venue list?  Please Like, Favourite, Save, Comment, Follow, and subscribe to keep my channels going and growing. Thank you ever so much tea friends.