St. Regis Hotel
2 East 55th Street
New York, NY
212.753.4500
visit website
Hours
Daily: 3:30pm to 5:30pm
#14

of 119
in NY
Overview
This is an exquisite tea room in five star luxury hotel. Great scones, sandwiches, and petite fours. The tea is also wonderful. Someone from your organization should really check it out.
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A classic...one of the very best the city has to offer...equal only to tea service at the Plaza and Carlyle Hotel...enjoy afternnon tea here when you are sixteen and when you are sixty.
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- L Castle-Flynn 10/07/07
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We took our niece to her first afternoon tea for her 16th birthday. The setting was lovely but not as formal as we had imagined, which worked out good since we didn't want to make her feel intimidated or uncomfortable. Even though it was a nice touch to have a guitarist playing but it was a bit too loud and didn't feel as elegat.
Choices for tea were many but not overwhelming. It took the server a while to get our tea and we waited for a long time to see if he was going to pour the first cup for us. It wasn't until we started eating our finger sandwiches the server saw our empty cups and realized we're waiting for him to pour the first cup since . It was at that time when asked if we would like him to pour tea for us. I was disappointed that he didn't just pour without askin... (more)g since I really wanted to show our niece how afternoon tea was supposed to be served.
Instead of serving scones first savory finger sandwiches were served on individual plates first. Each person got a plate of 6 finger sandwiches, which included curry chicken, goat cheese, cucumber, cured salmon, shrimp and egg salad. They're good and pretty fresh. Later a tray of Devonshire cream, lemon curd, raspberry jam and coconut fruit preserve were brought to the table then next the traditional 3-tier tray was presented. On the top tier there're plain and currant(if memory serves me right) scones. On the middle tray there're 3 tiny pineapple almond cakes that are size of my index finger and at the bottom a tray of petit four. Even though it wasn't a lot of food we're filled up with scones and tea and actually left some of the petit four untouched.
While we're there the manager came over to see if we're happly with the food. Our tea pots were filled once and that was plenty of tea for us since we also ordered some Evian water. I feel the service was un-intrusive but slightly lacking. More attention should have been paid to details. One of us had a chipped cup and had to ask the server to replace it just when he's about to pour tea into it. They failed to notice this when the cup was set on the table then again when the server was about to pour tea.
Our niece was impressed with the whole afternoon tea experience but we thought service and food didn't live up to the St. Regis name. It wasn't bad but it should have been more than just above average. Valuewise we didn't think it was good. I didn't expect a lot of food but those 3 tiny pieces of pineapple almond cake looked awfully lonely on a relatively large tray and I wish there're more variety of the sweets. An establishment like this should give excellent food and service but they fail to do so. I would not discourage people to go here but I think there are better choices than this at this price level.
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- crazy for tea 10/01/07
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