High Tea Cottage

Nice little place for High Tea. Great place for catching up with friends.
It is costly and pretentious. It's cozy but I expected much more with their tea selections. It was just ok and there's not much. Maybe about 15 - 20 selections. The tea sandwiches were ok. The bread were hard and were the cheap kind of bread. The tiny were pastries ok. It looks cute and that's about it. The scones came out burned. Again, nothing special about this place.

Went to the High Tea Cottage today. Had the Downton Tea with a salad. Everything was very good.

The scones (an apricot scone and a cranberry scone) were fresh out of the oven and were still warm. Put apricot jam on the apricot scone and lemon curd on one half of the cranberry scone and put clotted cream on the other half of the cranberry scone.

Noticed many others have posted pictures of the Downton Tea, but very few have posted pictures of the salad, so I am posting a picture of the salad.

Looking forward to the next time I go to the High Tea Cottage.

Celebrated my friend's birthday here. She had called a few weeks ahead and arranged everything. For a party of 15 or so, it was $41 each. I'm not sure how that is compared to other high tea places but I thought it was a little expensive for what it was. We had 3 different teas and an assortment of sandwiches, petite desserts and scones.

My favorite teas were the Rooibos Marzipan and Rooibos Chocolate teas. They were both sweet without any sugar and the milk made it even more delicious.

The scones were SO good. I could've eaten 10 of them (don't worry, I only had one). They were warm and toasty and airy.

My favorite sandwich was the chicken cranberry salad sandwich. It was really good and the sweetness of cranberry was the perfect touch.

Overall it was fun and I enjoyed the experience. Depending on the situation, maybe I'll come back!

Came here for a baby shower, I thought the ladies that ran the place did an excellent job.

It has been a while since I had high tea, and I had forgotten how much I love it!

This did not disappoint me. I thought the variety and selection of teas, sandwiches, scones and desserts were lovely and everything was tasty!!

No complaints here!

Purchased their Downton Abbey Tea for 2 Groupon special for about $35, which included Groupon's 30% off the Groupon price of $57 (regularly priced $84). $35 was fine. $57 would be stretching, but at $84, what we got was no where worthy of that price - a kettle of tea each (choosing from a selection of 20 different teas, while others on a couple of carts were not available for the Groupon special).

After tea was served, we were asked if we were enjoying our teas. My friend did not like his English Breakfast tea, so he was asked to share my pot. The response surprised them, and they did not know how to respond. I would have offered to replaced the tea for another choice rather than to force him to drink mine. That was just awkward.

We were then served a small salad with pineapple slices and a light vinaigrette dressing. Not bad, but nothing special.

Then came the 3 tiered stand with a selection of tea sandwiches (4 triangles of each: chicken breast with cranberries and walnuts, curried egg with arugula, and English cucumbers and cream cheese, 4 scones, and 6 dessert pieces.

The sandwiches were OK. Very thin, but OK. The curried egg was spread on really thin and with the yolk, was a bit dry. One of the triangles had a mature arugula leaf, and I had to struggle biting through the fibrous stem of it.

Scones weren't bad, but a little on the drier side. If it weren't for the jams and the tea, it would have been more challenging to eat them.

Dessert tartlettes made with pastry cups imported from Paris. Oy, why bother, hard and tasteless. I'd rather you just get something from Trader Joes or bake them yourself.

Everything was quaint. Nothing fabulous, especially not at their regular prices. However, the ambiance was lovely for an afternoon tea. However, perhaps not when they are fully booked. Then it feels cramped and loud.

I will have to say the staff was friendly and accommodating, especially by allowing me to cash in my Groupon on a weekend, when in fine print on Groupon's website, it says the Groupon is not valid during weekends. +1 star for that.

We had Sat afternoon tea here. Reservation made, the three of us arrived on time. I parked around the corner in the neighborhood free. They tried to sell us the Kensington tea which is $45. But we had a res for the Downton Abbey tea at $35. That we got but we missed out on the starter of spinach quiche, salad or tomato bisque soup. We chose our teas from a tray of about 30 teas. I had the Rooibos mango tea. I liked it. The teapots each came in cute tea cozies. Then came the choice of preserves with cream for the scones. I had the cherry and apricot ginger. Cherry was yummy. Apricot ginger was VERY GINGER! Our 3 tier trays arrived with tea sandwiches(many - yummy), scones(2- good) and desserts(3-tiny). Good service although I needed more water. Cute place.

Sigh. So much promise; such strange pacing that adversely affected our first visit. My dear friend had received a gift certificate from her daughter for Christmas. As it was about to expire, she asked me to join her today for high tea.

We parked down the street in a metered lot for $2.50. There is metered street parking, but not a lot of it. Reservations are a must, as the cottage is tiny.

We were seated promptly at a corner table for two, overlooking the petite garden. A large basket filled with labeled loose teas was brought over from which to select a flavor. About a third are rooibos-based, so caffeine free. Was happy to see that!

The apricot was the most fragrant, so went with that one. A steaming pot came out quickly, covered with a fabric tea cozy. Charming flowered tea cups and saucers set off the table settings.

Then an interminable wait for the soup course began. It literally took 30 minutes for the cream of portabella mushroom soup to arrive. Were they rooting in the garden for the 'shrooms? What possibly could have taken so long?

It was lovely when it finally came, full bodied, creamy, and filled with mushroom slices. There was also a lemon slice as garnish, but also light flavor enhancement.

After that, the presentation off the tiered tray with finger sandwiches, scones, and mini desserts took another while to come. As such, at the end of the meal, the server was hurrying us along, as someone else was there for the same table.

She even made the faux pas of saying so, which was off-putting. My friend muttered, "If it didn't take 30 minutes for the soup, the meal wouldn't have to be rushed." Hear, Hear!

The savories and sweets were quite tasty, so it's a shame the server didn't handle the tempo of the tea service better or at least with better communication.

I don't even know where to begin. This was not our first experience here, so it makes me sad that today is the day I am writing the review, as we've had a couple of lovely visits here in the past.

Today was a disaster. The only thing that could have made it worse would have been if the building caught fire, or someone in our party was injured. Though I think if either of those things happened we might not have been charged the ~$200 we paid so even that might not have been as bad.

Where to start? We called in and asked if there were any available seatings, and they took a reservation. We arrived a little early, and were promptly seated. This is the last time the word "prompt" will appear in this review.

We were given menus for only one option of tea. Usually they have several (indeed, as I write this there are two options on the website), but today it was only one. When we asked about other options we were first told that there were none, then were told that because we "seemed nice" they would make an "exception" and offer us the other menu.

It took about 15 minutes for them to get around to taking our tea order, and another 20 minutes for us to receive our tea. This should have set our expectations for how long it would take to receive our food... we even asked one of the staff why it was taking so long and were told:

1) It takes a long time to brew tea.
2) They "squeezed" us in, they didn't really have room for us today due to a large party.

I guess we were supposed to be grateful that they allowed us to dine there today? To be honest, if they did not have capacity, or were going to have issues with service, they could have been up front when we called and we would have either made other plans, or come in forewarned that it was going to be slow.

But there is slow and then there is S-L-O-W. By the time the tea arrived at our table it was no longer hot, just warm. Our soup was also just warm. It took over an hour before our first tray of food arrived, and then it was 10 - 15 minutes between each person once it started trickling in. We never got any jam and since we never had anyone check on us after the food was delivered, we just carried on without it. One of the people in our party didn't even get any cream with their scones... it just seemed very haphazard and like the staff was overwhelmed...

When we were ready to leave we had to get up and find the waitress to get our check... we were there for over two hours! For tea! And when we got home we realized that one of our party hadn't even received all their food.

So when you read the other reviews saying that service takes a while, take heed. Come when you are not very hungry, and bring good company. Expect to kill a few hours. Seriously, sort by review and read the complaints most people have so you aren't surprised when you get here.

Great British high tea experience!

I tried this tea place for the first time today for a friend's birthday lunch. Overall, I would rate the ambiance a 5, the service a 4 and the food a 3.

The restaurant is located in Woodland Hills near a residential area. There is no onsite parking but there is a public parking lot across the street and off street parking a few blocks down.

I really enjoyed the ambiance and the decoration of the restaurant. It has very nice collection of fine China, cute little tea tables and beautiful fresh flowers throughout. The whole setting felt intimate and classy.

There were two menu selections, the Kensington for $48 and Harry/Meghan for $42. Both selections came with salad/soup, assortment of finger sandwiches, scones and desserts. Since I don't eat most meat except for seafood, the server was able to accommodate me with other sandwiches. I found the food tasted ok and I enjoyed the lemon custard that was served with scones. However, I found most other sandwiches to be average.

As for the service, our server was very polite and friendly. However, I found the service to be quite slow as it took a while before our food (mostly served cold) arrived and the entire lunch took almost 3 hours. We did enjoy the birthday special they did for my friend near the end, which came with a candle on macaroon and a special gift.

I would recommend this restaurant for British tea experience but not so much for the food.

Pros: yummy teas, cute patio, sweet staff

Cons: no parking, super limited menu, bites look cute but are nothing special, seating can be a bit odd for a large group (we were 15)

We arrived on a hot afternoon for a retirement party. Some of us had to trek quite a bit from where we scavenged parking (the meters weren't taking money). We asked for water and were told we had to have tea first! Apparently there is an order to this, but no water, really? We sat there waiting for our hot teas and wonder bread sandwiches. Items arrived at random times on different tables and we got one cup of water at a time coming out. It was all quite strange but maybe they aren't equipped for large groups? Anyway, I wouldn't return. The lack of quality/flavorful ingredients and the fact that they leave the cream out open with no top or temperature control is just questionable. The tea was delicious...I would just get that in a paper to-go cup if I could!