{Afternoon Tea} Secret Garden Tea Company

February 24, 2013 by reactiveness 1 Comment

I’ve wanted to go for afternoon tea ever since 2nd year but it was the price that made me shy away from it especially when my friend would say “is ~$30 worth spending on mini sandwiches, scones, and dessert? That’s the price of dinner at Cactus Club!”

3^rd year rolled around the corner and again I wanted to go for afternoon tea for my birthday but I didn’t think it would be fair for my friends to pay $30 for sandwiches and dessert.

Anyways, I finally went for high tea with some of my friends on Wednesday! I’ve heard great things about Secret Garden and I’ve seen countless pictures of their 3 tiered high tea service so I was pretty excited.  My friend and I got there at 2:15 pm and we waited for about 15 minutes for a table. I was somewhat surprised to see quite a few high schoolers there! (Aren’t they suppose to be in school?)

Display of yummy treats

Secret Garden has quite a selection of teas that are available for purchase. It was actually pretty fun smelling all the different types of teas. I really wanted to try the strawberry kiwi tea because of its sweetness, and the lavender earl gray because of its sharp floral notes.

I was really tempted to get the full high tea for $26.95 but my friend said that I will definitely not be able to finish it so we all ended up getting the Demi High Tea for $12.95 each.  The Demi High Tea includes 1 scone with Devon Cream and raspberry jam, 2 mini sandwiches,  2 mini sweets, and a pot of tea. I didn’t end up getting the Strawberry Kiwi or the Lavender Earl Gray tea. I got the Jasmine Dragon Tears tea…. with a name like that you just have to get it.

According to Secret Garden, the Jasmine Dragon Tears tea is

A very rare tea.
Dragon tears are picked in the
first three weeks of spring.
The delicate leaves are then
hand-rolled into small pearls. Only
the most fragrant jasmine blossoms
plucked within one hour of sunrise
are layered between the tea.

True to the description, the tea was VERY fragrant. The smell and taste of the jasmine was very strong with a sweet after taste. It was quite refreshing and nice.

The two mini sandwiches were ok. I like the creamy shrimp with carrot croissant more than the spinach roast beef sandwich. The spinach roast beef sandwich was good but I didn’t like the acidic taste of the pickle in the bread because it was quite overpowering. The croissant was better but I couldn’t tell that there was shrimp inside.

There isn’t much to say about the scone but I thought the Devon cream was interesting. It was my first time trying it and it taste like whipped butter but has the consistency of a thick whipped cream.

The Rocky Road was the best part of this whole afternoon tea experience. I love all things sweet and sugary. The Rocky Road consist of macadamia nuts and mini marshmallows covered with dark chocolate. Surprisingly the Rocky Road wasn’t all that sweet! I like the contrast between the crunchy macadamia nut and the soft marshmallows bits.

éclair

My second mini sweet was an éclair. I love how the puff was nice and soft and the cream wasn’t too sweet. It was like biting into nothing because the puff was so light.

I had a great afternoon tea experience with my friends. I love how we each got different teas so it was nice being able to try something different. I got to try the Mango Green, Rose Earl Gray, Lavender Earl Gray, and the Yorkshire. The Lavender Earl Gray taste exactly the way it smells. The lavender notes were very strong. The Rose Earl Gray my favorite because of the light floral notes. Unlike the Lavender Earl Gray, there was a balance between the floral notes and the Earl Gray. The Mango Green was my least favorite because I’m not a fan of fruity teas despite the fact that I wanted to try the Strawberry Kiwi (… good thing I didn’t get the Strawberry Kiwi). The Yorkshire was okay because all black teas taste the same to me once cream and sugar has been added.

Anyways, I had a great afternoon tea experience with my friends and I’m glad that I finally got to try it! The staff at Secret Garden were really nice and knowledgeable. Reservations need to be made if you’re going for the full high tea service and I believe that there are 3 seatings for it: 12:00, 2:30 and I don’t know when the last seating is…

There are tons of parking surrounding Secret Garden. The only problem I had with parking was I couldn’t find the “free 2 hours of parking parkade” that is on West 41 and Yew Street. I ended up parking on a residential area that also has 2 hours of free parking. Other than that, I really want to try their full high tea service one day.