Teatime Tranquility & Treasures — Restaurant in Alachua

The good: the pastries were delicious. The ambience was nice. The staff were friendly and attentive.

The bad: the savory food was absolutely disgusting. I have never in my life had egg salad with celery, onions, and bell peppers. Would have been fine but it did not taste good. The broccoli soup we had looked over cooked like it spent days cooking in a crockpot, it was brown. Multiple people in our party did not finish their savory sandwiches.

Also during our visit we were told we could only order large pots of tea as they didn’t have enough small pots to an accommodate us. The price of the large pots are not on the menu and honestly I still don’t know how much they were.

The ugly: while the staff were nice I am still baffled by a weird situation we had. We made a reservation for 10. We were told we would be sat at tables 5 and 5 which is what we wanted. But when we got there we were sat at a table for 8 and a small side table for 2 next to it. There was a whole large unused table in the room with us. We asked if we could sit at that table as the tiny table for 2 was uncomfortable and left those two people out of conversations at the big table. The waitress told us no we could not sit at the other large table. She did not give a reason why. No one ever came and sat at it.

Some people in my group are more forgiving and will probably be back but I definitely won’t.

I would say stick to the pastries and a small group if you come.

Editing to add: this place also only allows cash tips for their servers, but you do not find out until the end when you go to pay. They gave some cockamamie reason about Florida taxes or whatever, but in reality, they’re shorting their servers their tips, because who is going to leave, go get cash, and come back? I wonder how many times their servers have been stiffed...

Lovely Queen Anne style classic teahouse. I’ve been here twice and the tea and the setting is great. Absolutely love all the unique place settings and different types of classic teacups and china that gets showcased. Highly recommend the Hummingbird cake and the chicken salad is quite good. I had a side salad with fresh greens and raspberry vinaigrette, which was very tasty. Ask for the dressing on the side, there was a pool of it on my plate that spilled over onto my sandwich. I really want to give this place a higher rating, but there’s a few fundamental things lacking for a really great teahouse. One is that the scones are not very good at all. I was hoping to find a more classic English scone selection, but these were flat and had a baking soda flavor. The other issue is, like many places, they seem to be having some staffing issues and so the service isn’t spectacular, but it wasn’t terrible. However, the owner seems to be taking this out on his staff and complaining about his staff to the customers which is unprofessional in my opinion. We were there twice in the span of three weeks, and this happened both times. It’s clear that the person who waited on us is quite new and has very little experience waiting on people, but complaining to your customers that your wait staff doesn’t know what they’re doing just makes the whole experience very...

I have enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere of Teatime, tranquility, and treasures several times. I loved visiting when it was located in the beautiful Victorian with lots of little rooms that afforded some level of privacy to the visiting groups. This most recent visit was to the new location further down the street, and I have to say that while it’s much much smaller total square footage, the tables are closer together and there’s no feelings of privacy when you can eavesdrop at the conversations over at the next table, the atmosphere is still lovely, because it is created by the lovely couple that runs this beautiful place. They take the time to come out and talk to their patrons and create memories of fun and specialness. Was this the best high tea I’ve ever had? Most likely not. But I’ve been to a lot of high teas including in London and Vienna, and I’m just happy that a small town of Alachua has such a lovely tearoom filled with treasures and good times to be had by all! A couple of suggestions for high tea: less celery and more chicken in the chicken salad sandwiches, and also actual loose leaf tea that guests can pour with the trainer from their teapot themselves so they can see it’s not teabags (like I’ve seen some people on here complain).

Overall a lovely place run by a lovely couple! Wonderful time and...