Phoebe S.
Yelp
I went to Town Meeting Bistro for afternoon tea with several friends with high hopes, but unfortunately we were disappointed overall. The tea selection was very limited; there was only one decaf option, and although there were cute steeping timers on the table that we were instructed to use depending on whether we wanted the tea to be light, medium, or strong, by the time the tea was brought to our table it had already been steeping for several minutes. The food menu looked promising, but asking for vegetarian options seemed to confuse the server, even though when I made the booking I'd specified that one of our members was vegetarian; the server seemed thrown by that request, and clearly hadn't been informed of it ahead of time. Portion sizes overall were very small.
Flavor-wise, the tea sandwiches were quite bland. The coronation chicken was the most flavorful of the bunch, and basically reached the level of "ok". Cucumber sandwiches are always delicate, but these had no flavor, or apparently any seasoning, whatsoever. Additionally, the edges of some of the sandwiches were dry, indicating the sandwiches had not been made to order.
The good news about the ginger scones is that they had very good flavor and texture, probably the tastiest baked good on the plate, and the lemon curd to go on top was delicious. The bad news is that the scones were about the size of a half dollar (smaller than an oreo), and there was one tiny scone per person. I've had afternoon tea in at least a dozen different places, and sometimes they serve one scone, often two, but the standard size is generally about three inches across.
The other pastries were of varying quality; the flavors tended to be ok, but overall either the cake, or the frosting, or both were dense and heavy, not light and fluffy. The one exception was the carrot cake, which everyone in our group enjoyed.
Additionally, other physical details were not good: the area under the table was dirty, parts of the table were sticky, and the handle of the honey pitcher was also sticky.
If this tea had been around $30 per person, we would have thought it was adequate; for almost $85 pp including tax and tip, our group was very, very unimpressed. We will not be returning.