Tea for two - how about you?

Tea rooms inspire a return to relaxed, slower-paced life. By KATHLEEN D. BAILEY

It helped open the route from East to West and spawned a whole genre of English restaurants. Little girls serve it to their teddy bears, in plastic cups, while the Japanese have created a powerful ritual around it. When the Colonists dumped it in Boston Harbor, they sacrificed a treasure and tradition they had brought with them from Britain.

Turns out it’s actually good for you, too.

Tea, a drink made from leaves steeped in water, is in the news of late both as an antioxidant and as the center of a ritual to slow down harried, modern life. For tea aficionados, this is old news.

An oasis in Northwood

Sally Knowlton has been serving tea all her life.

“I’m of English background, and it’s a heritage I grew up with,” she said. She began serving English-style teas professionally about 10 years ago, for showers, parties and women’s groups.

This spring she added the service to her husband Bob Chadbourn’s family restaurant on Route 4 in Northwood. It makes use of a slow time at the restaurant, the afternoons, Knowlton said.

It also provides a natural rest-your-feet place for the thousands of shoppers who come every year to Northwood’s renowned Antique Alley. Knowlton, already an entrepreneur, runs a gift shop, The Pied Cow, on a winterized porch at Chadbourn’s.

Knowlton sets a table in a back alcove of Chadbourn’s with a linen tablecloth, a flowered porcelain teapot, sugar cubes in a clear glass bowl and gold-rimmed cups so delicate you can see light through them. She brings tiny cucumber sandwiches, made on white bread with herbed butter. Chocolate-dipped cookies, shortbread and blueberry bread with peach jam round out the menu. She’s especially proud of the Linzer tarts, baked by her stepson, Tim, and filled with lemon curd and raspberry jam.

This is her “everyday” tea, served from 2 to 4 p.m. For a large group, she’ll make English trifle, a complicated confection involving sponge cake, jam and cream.

“The English never waste anything,” she said, noting that they originally created the trifle to use up leftover sponge cake. But her cake is fresh and available by prior arrangement.

The tea is the star here, though, and Knowlton rattles off the varieties she serves: Scottish Breakfast, China White, Earl Grey, Imperial Gold, Darjeeling. If her customers don’t arrange in advance, she’ll usually go with an English Yorkshire variety. At Christmas the Northwood merchants held a Shop Hop, and Knowlton opened the tearoom to serve a “spiced Christmas tea.”

Knowlton thinks there’s a place for afternoon tea on busy Route 4. “It’s the sociability people like,” she said. “It’s going back to an earlier time when we spent time together, chatting. Unfortunately, we’ve lost that.”

‘A Cup of Tea with Lydia’

Lydia E. Harris knows tea – she writes a nationally syndicated column, “A Cup of Tea with Lydia,” found locally in the Country Register out of Deerfield.

Harris was a coffee-drinker the first half of her life. She gained a new enthusiasm for tea after reading Emilie Barnes’ “If Teacups Could Talk,” a 50th birthday gift.

“I thought, ‘What a fun, delicious way to show hospitality and nurture friendships!’” She learned the basics of serving a three-course tea – sandwiches, scones and sweets – and was on her way to teach others.

“For me, tea is far more than a beverage,” Harris said. “Whether taking tea in a tea room or serving it in my own home, tea is an opportunity to warm the hearts of others even as I bring joy to my own life.”

What do people enjoy about tea? Harris is almost rhapsodic at this point. “The slow pace, beautiful ambience, delicious morsels and feeling pampered.”

Also, she said, “When individuals are served tea in a beautiful environment, they feel nurtured, cared for, loved.”
Ironically, she’s never had an English high tea in England. “My husband and I traveled to England, but that was in my coffee-drinking days.” She found an enjoyable substitute at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, B.C., Canada.

Harris shares her passion by teaching a tea course, catering teas for the women of her church and writing her column. (She shares a recipe on page 49.)

Stopping the world

Like Sally Knowlton, Brenda Ghorashi is an entrepreneur. Ghorashi turned a ranch house in Londonderry into an antiques complex, Antiqui-Teas. But the jewel in the crown is her tea room on the upper level, a flowery celebration of all things tea.

A chintzy exuberance spreads from the Rose Room to the green-and-pink Garden Room to the Children’s Tea Room. Silk flowers drape antique mirrors, and weathered dressers hold stacks of gold-rimmed cups and eggshell-thin plates. White “fairy lights” twine through the silk flowers on even a warm summer day.

The tea room’s location, on busy Route 28, surprised Kristin and David Mularski of West Newton, Mass. Tea room “collectors,” they had found Antiqui-Teas on the Internet and made reservations for their 35th wedding anniversary.

They’ve been visiting tea rooms together for 35 years, all over the United States and in Europe.

“It slows our lives,” Kristin said. “When you have a tea like this, you can’t eat quickly. It makes you appreciate your time together.”

And contrary to public opinion, the food is enough for a male appetite, Dave said. He and Kristin point to the three-tiered stand they’re working their way through: four sandwiches, two “savory tarts,” scones with clotted cream, chocolate-dipped strawberries, angel food cake, a chocolate mousse tart, gingerbread, pound cake slices dipped in chocolate and nuts. “I never leave hungry,” he said.

“And all the flowers are edible,” Kristin added.

Then there’s the tea itself. They also drink coffee, but tea has a “lighter, fresher feeling,” Kristin said, and more variety. Their favorite brand is called Courtship Tea, made by a small tea company on Cape Cod. Their second choice is Paris by the Harney Company.

But they also give high marks to the house tea served at Antiqui-Teas. “It has mixed berries and rose hips,” Kristin said.

Cream or lemon? “Neither,” they chorus, although Dave will sometimes take a little cream if the tea is really strong.
They’ve interested both their grown sons in tea, and they hope to observe the ritual for another 35 years. “Tea room people don’t hurry you through,” Dave said.

The Mularskis planned to celebrate their anniversary with tea in the afternoon and a Red Sox game at night. “We’ll have tea and cookies here, hot dogs and beer tonight,” Dave said with a smile. “It’s a yin-yang thing.”

Antiqui-Teas and Chadbourn’s Restaurant both serve tea by reservation. Call Antiqui-Teas at 432-7979 or Chadbourn’s at 942-9203. Prices vary depending on the complexity of the tea.

Kathleen D. Bailey is a freelance writer from Raymond.