Join me in welcoming guest author Kimberly Button with a review of the Royal Tea at the Waldorf Astoria Orlando Resort.

Tea time seems to be a vanishing indulgence in today’s modern world. So when I found out that the Waldorf Astoria Orlando is bringing back the culinary experience steeped (pardon the pun!) in tradition, I was happy to check it out.

You have got to make plans ahead of time for The Royal Tea at Waldorf Astoria Orlando. It’s not a “just pop in” kind of dining experience. The Royal Tea is served only on Sundays, and only from 3 – 5 p.m. The culinary staff needs advance notice to prepare platters of sandwiches and treats to be available for those choosing The Royal Tea experience.

The Royal Tea is held in the Waldorf’s beautiful Peacock Alley lounge. The lounge, with its vibrant carpet of royal blue and deep greens in peacock feather motif, is regal and welcoming at the same time.

Peacock Alley has plenty of seating options, and it is also where you’ll find the main bar. A variety of guests were seated in the lounge during our visit, including those just sitting around and talking, guests with luggage waiting to depart, and a family ordering quick snacks from the bar. There are plenty of cozy couches and seats surrounding large tables.

A piano player starts to perform in the lounge at the time tea service begins, which is a welcome treat to listen to live music from across the lounge.

For our tea reservations, we were shown to a small table on the outskirts of the lounge that had been set up for tea. It appeared that there were only two parties with tea reservations on this day (each of us had a party of two), and both of us were sat in opposite corners of the lounge.

After we were seated, our waiter came by and asked us for our tea selection. It would be wise to check out the menu on the kiosk outside of Peacock Alley before sitting down, to choose which type of tea you want, since a formal menu is not presented at the table. Our server was able to make recommendations, though, and suggested the most popular tea, a white ginger pear.

The six teas come from Tea Forte, and are served for your selection upon a silver platter. Teas include English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Decaf English Breakfast, Jasmine Green Tea, Chamomile, and White Ginger Pear.

The teas are in a triangle tea bag, with a cute little leaf attached by a wire at the top. The leaf serves up two purposes – not only is it super cute, but it can be bent over the top of your cup to keep the tea bag from floating around.

The White Ginger Pear was exceptionally good, with a smoother flavor than many teas. The black teas tend to have a stronger flavor, but this white tea was delicate with just a hint of caffeine.

After the tea was served and allowed to steep for a few minutes, the first platter of food was brought out.

The first serving was an assortment of tea sandwiches, one of each for both of us. The selections include cucumber, roasted turkey, black forest ham, classic egg salad, and smoked salmon.

The sandwiches were flavorful and really great. Often, tea sandwiches can be bland, but these sandwiches were real standouts. Forget just plain cucumber sandwiches. The Waldorf Astoria Orlando bumps it up a notch by adding shaved Asian pear, which was a crisp and refreshing combination paired with dill cream cheese.

The most impressive, I thought, was the [Read more…]