heads up, this review is for the afternoon tea. i’ve never stayed at the hotel as i used to live in greensboro briefly. my parents still live here so when i visit gso i stay with them. 😉

i actually have been here for tea more than once — one time before i liked tea and this time since i’ve become a huge tea enjoyer.

the first time, i still very much loved it. i liked trying all of the savories, sweets, and the scone from the light afternoon tea. i didn’t try a lot of the actual tea as, for some odd reason, i thought all tea tasted like grass (rolling my eyes at my former self now). it was also cool that they brought everything out on a three-tier plate; i mean who wouldn’t think that was cool?! the inside of the place, being a hotel, feels like a regal one that you would see in the likes of the movie home alone. the service is always lovely, too.

this time around, about two years later, we decided to come back. in the last year, i’ve gotten very “into” tea. i drink it a lot and i love trying new ones… so i was happy to hear when the o.henry had seasonal teas to go with the o.henry tea, which is their largest afternoon tea of the three total that they offer.

i got their holiday spiced black tea which included cinnamon and orange peel. of all the teas i tried, this one was my favorite. the other people i attended with got the chocolate chai and the other holiday tea, which tasted like a redhot candy.

onto the actual noshes. each sweet and savory are about a bite or two big. usually, when i have afternoon tea, i eat in the order of savories -> scone -> sweets.

so let’s start with the savories: the o.henry tea includes an open-face cucumber finger sandwich, a mini ham, brie, & fig croissant, smoked salmon on a mini crumpet, a tea quiche, and a chicken salad tart made with filo dough. these were all delicious, my favorite ended up being the chicken salad tart.

onto the scone, which was vanilla. it was soft with a wonderful outside crust, not too hard or crunchy. the scones come with real clotted cream which is a plus (a lot of places do not use legit clotted cream nowadays) and lemon curd. they are perfect on this scone and enhance the vanilla perfectly.

lastly, the sweets. the menu doesn’t specify what they are, it just says “assorted sweets.” there is a mini cheesecake, a macaron, a slice of cake covered in strawberry jam and coconut, and a molasses cookie. i believe the sweets left more to be desired, to be honest. since the menu was not descriptive of the sweets, i got worried when i saw the cheesecake. i couldn’t tell if it contained raspberries or blackberries. i am very, very allergic to blackberries. i flagged down the waitress and she informed me that the cheesecake had raspberry filling, thankfully, but if the menu had just told me what sweets were available it would’ve saved me the anxiety. i think of the sweets, i liked the macaron and the cheesecake most. the molasses cookie had way too much molasses. the jammy cake was only okay, partially because i just don’t like coconut shavings.

overall, i had a wonderful experience. the service was good, we had a very nice waitress who was very accommodating with all of the different kinds of teas we ordered. the savory food was fantastic and the sweets were still good even though they were not my favorites. the tea itself was top tier in my opinion, i would come here just for a pot of it. i do recommend afternoon tea at the o.henry!