Smith & Hsu — Restaurant in Zhongshan District

The Victoria Afternoon Tea Set is great value. Of course the quality has gone down every time I come but I think it still tastes better than more expensive afternoon teas offered at Taipei hotels.

The selection of teas is great and they give you a box with bottles of all the different teas to sniff beforehand, which is a nice touch. The other cute thing is they have different tea pots for the different teas. We were wondering why everyone else’s looked different but of course, it was because they all ordered Asian teas like oolong!

Of the food, I like the savory sandwiches and the scones are pretty good too. The smears for the scones and the desserts are pretty average. Sometimes they are out of some cake selections. In addition, I do prefer the tea jellies they used to have over the yogurt they offer now.

The interior is gorgeous. We wanted to sit at a certain table and the waiter lied and said someone requested that specific table🤣. It’s probably just a table exclusive for reservations. So we decided to sit at another table that he said had a minimum charge which we had no problem with as we already knew the tea set price would exceed that. It’s by the window and you have to remove your shoes so the waiter just made his own life harder. But of course I am not going to deduct a star for one worker because the rest of the employees were all great. There is a time limit but they let us...

Arrived 8:30pm last night for an appointment and the tea house was empty except for 2 patrons who were there before us.

I’m leaving Taiwan today after a 12-day trip exploring the country, and I must say, the customer service across the entire country has been sensational… except last night.

The boy who attended to us was exceedingly rude, highly condescending in his speech and manners, and when asked about what flavour scones were there, he was visibly frustrated and reached in front of us to hurrily get to the page with scone flavours. What scornful way to introduce scones.

Loved the deco and the idea behind smith&hsu, but to be fair, all that paled when contrasted by a staff that didn’t want to be there. It reflected poorly not just on the business, but in this instance, could easily tarnish Taiwan’s reputation for those that didn’t...

Overall, this was a solid afternoon tea. The Queen Victoria set was a lot of food and well worth the price, in my opinion. However, I’m taking a star off for a couple reasons. For one, the service was a bit slow. Second, the desserts that were served must have been in the freezer because they were borderline frozen. For afternoon tea, I think it’s important to pay attention to those little details and make sure everything’s going out at the proper temperature. In terms of taste, the open-faced sandwiches, yogurt, biscotti, and scones were all really tasty. The teas were also delicious. Also, we asked last minute for them to switch out one of the sandwiches as we don’t eat beef and they were super accommodating and made...