Boston Tea Party: The Courtyard Tea Room at the Boston Public Library
White tablecloths, silver, cups with saucers, and filigreed strainers. Flutes of champagne. We’re at afternoon tea at the Courtyard Tea Room at the Boston Public Library. If you get a window seat, you can view the charming courtyard that gives the tea room its name. Regardless, it’s the tea room (not the adjoining map room) that you want for the atmosphere.
You select a tea from a menu enclosed in a vintage book, and that—and the choice of champagne or not—is the end of the decision-making. At the Courtyard, tea starts with a seasonal salad and espresso-sized cup of soup. It’s a prelude to the main event, which is of course the three-tiered serving dish with savory, crusts-removed finger sandwiches on the bottom plate (lobster salad, smoked salmon, chicken salad, cucumber and others).
The savory course is followed by miniature sweets: tiny frosted cupcakes garnished with pumpkin seeds, airy macarons, slivers of lemon cake, dark chocolate tartlets. The top plate contains what tea is known for: scones with pots of clotted cream and jams.
Can’t finish? (You probably can’t.) The polished service includes small take-home boxes slid discreetly onto the table near the meal’s end. The sweet offerings and scones are sturdy enough to survive a trip back to the Upper Valley on the Dartmouth Coach or, presumably, the backseat of your car.
Reservations are required. As best as I can tell, there is no specific dress code, but for a special occasion such as this, many partakers of the afternoon tea were spiffily attired. Two women seated next to us smoothed their skirts, commenting that they were wearing dresses “for the first time in we don’t know how long.” In a prior visit to the Library, I discovered the very existence of the Tea Room when I spied a lady wearing an actual, tea-appropriate hat.
The entire event could surpass your dreams. Tea at Trifecta in Boston’s Four Seasons Hotel is more modern, definitely boozy, and enjoyable though pricier. But the Courtyard Tea Room, in the history-soaked Boston Public Library no less, appears to be more traditional, which is very much the point.
More information is available here.
(What’s the difference between afternoon tea, cream tea, high tea, and elevenses? I had to look it up. Answers are here.)
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word..