The Cozy Tea Cart — Restaurant in Brookline

This was a great Saturday Adventure for a Good Cup of Tea...

My husband and I had received a Groupon for a Tea Tasting for Two as a gift from his parents. I had called ahead for a Saturday reservation. We arrived 15 minutes early to poke around before our tea tasting. It's a very lovely shop when you first step into the place. One side is full of different teas and tea related gifts and accessories, while the other room is for tea tastings and dining.

My husband and I had a tea tasting with 4 other people. The proprietor, Danielle Beaudette, did a fantastic job of explaining the different categories or teas, the tea making process and describing her travels to the various place she sources her tea from each year. We were all asked about the types of teas we were interested in and she tailored the teas we would try based on our preferences. I prefer black and green teas and was able to try new things that I've never tasted before. Danielle explained the proper method to brew each type of tea that we tried and gave suggestions on what types of things we should consider using to brew a good cup of tea at home. She even gave some recommendations for books I could get to learn more about tea and cooking with tea.

We ended up staying for lunch after the tasting. They have a nice selection of sweet and savory dishes for lunch and we decided to have more tea with lunch. I got the chicken with pesto, a raspberry white chocolate scone with clotted cream and the baozhong oolong tea. It was very delicious and hit the spot on a chilly rainy day. My husband got the mushroom and cheese panini, bacon and cheese quiche and the Phoenix green tea. He enjoyed his meal and tried my scone, which he also really liked.

We looked around some more after lunch and I got to appreciate how nicely the shop was decorated. There were interesting photos from Danielle's travels hanging on the walls. I got through browsing about half of the shelves full of tea and looking at the tea accessories. We ended getting two of the teas from our tasting and getting the one from our lunch. I also finally found a decent measuring spoon for the loose leaf tea. This place is a great day trip adventure if you want to share your love of tea with someone or introduce them to the wonders of tea. The staff at the shop are friendly, pleasant to talk to and very knowledgeable. It's a great place to pick up good quality loose leave tea for yourself or as a gift to someone. My husband and I plan to come back again once we finish our current...

We so wanted to love this experience... We we were ready to fall in love... And yet... It is a very cute space with a huge tea menu, and we were greeted by a very friendly staff member. We were seated inches from the bathroom door (which was not just awkward for us), and our server appeared and took our order. Sadly, we didn't see her after that for ages. She finally appeared with our pots of tea, but didn't bring, spoons, napkins, sugar, milk or a timer to our table or even mention that the tea was still brewing, so one pot ended up over brewed, and one pot never had hot water or enough tea leaves to make tea. We had a young child with us, and they didn't bring her drink over until later. She also brought our scones at that time (although we had also ordered savory food), with meager amounts of lemon curd and clotted cream for which we had to pay extra. She never brought us silverware or napkins. Our server told us that our other food was about to come out. 45 minutes later, we were about to leave without the rest of our food, since no one had ever come back to check on us, and as we were getting up, the food came out. It was then that a more experienced server checked in on us. The quiches were delicious, although with very soggy bottoms, and the soup was pleasant, but again no one checked back. The restaurant was busy, although they had plenty of staff for the number of tables they were serving. We do plan on giving them another chance, hoping that this was a collision of new server and the universe, however, we were disappointed that in discussing this with the management, it fell on...

Bad, on so many levels.Lady at my table who ordered a salad found a GLOVE in it! The place was only half full, and our group ordered ahead of time, first waitress was extremely slow, orders were meager, lady next to me had ordered a half sandwich & they used ends of the bread so the thing was smaller than a deck of cards. My biscuit was warmed in microwave (chewy), there were 4 little pieces of beef in my stew, whole bowlful of gravy. My daughter's chicken pot pie was served in an aluminum tin, and had chewy undercooked crust, and her marcrons were served on a paper plate. My tea was wrong flavor when they kept saying it was strawberry and it was not, and many others were missing their teas entirely, which took a very long time to come. Gift shop was cute, way too many fails for one day. Apparently owner was not there, or really clueless about the quality of her food and staff. Menu should be half the size that it is cuz they kept saying how small their kitchen is, so they should NOT be pretending like they have the ability to offer these things. Other lady at my table tried the Canadian meat pie and sent it back, terrible and way too gamey. I hope they take an honest look at themselves and cut the menu to what they can honestly do, and serve salad without a...