The Mad Hatter Restaurant & Bakery — Restaurant in City of Rochester

Had High Tea on a weekday, and was disappointed. The food was quite good, but most everything else was lacking. The dining area is very close and noisy. (There is no separation of tea seatings from general seating). The tables had no table cloths, and were made of wood more reminiscent of a country diner. As for the "clotted cream" for our scones, apparently the management doesn't know the difference between clotted cream and whipped cream, which a trip to Wegmans would easily clarify. The website boasts of 30 "flavors" of tea, which is misleadingly accurate, since all but four offerings were "flavored " teas. I suppose this is impressive to the general public, but for those who like good teas, it is disappointing that all they could come up with was two types of breakfast teas, a Darjeeling , and one unflavored white tea. Imagine going to a gourmet coffee house and only having a choice of a generic breakfast coffee and two other types. Even a few additional varieties like types of Kemun and Yunan would have sufficed. Even worse was the infusion of the tea. I grant that it is a concession to efficiency that the tea is not served in a teapot. (Though it would have been helpful if the teapot, which held the hot water, had either been warmed first, or placed in a tea cozy, British stye, so one could have hot tea throughout the meal.) But the worst aspect of the tea service was that they expected you to infuse the same tea leaves again and again if you want more tea. Imagine being asked to use the same coffee grounds if you wanted more coffee! When I asked for more tea leaves the waitress was startled and explained that our ($22 each) fixed price was for just one amount, and that it "was good for a couple more infusions." I was tempted to call her back and show her the barely colored Darjeeling flavored water of the second infusion. The disappointment continued when we were served our pastries, and were not given plates to put them on. Though the waitress did apologize after the fact, it was embarrassing to drop crumbs and powdered sugar on the table. But perhaps the worst part of our experience was totally avoidable, and without excuse. The manager or supervisor loudly interviewed a candidate for a job right beside us while we were eating! This rudeness was (almost) made up by the waitress coming out to the parking lot to return my credit card which I had forgotten. Will we return? Not likely, though if we do it will be for a regular breakfast or lunch. The food was excellent. (Though note that they do not take reservations). I grant that, having lived and studied in England, and having enjoyed authentic high tea in the homes of our British friends, my expectations were high. But I have had much better experiences in other tea houses here in my home country. I would advise looking elsewhere if you really want to experience high tea, and save money by just...

Mad Hatter has been our go to local breakfast spot for the past four years. We know the team at MadHatter very well and we were so grateful to learn that they also have a catering service. Kristina, who is an excellent owner, baker, chef, manager (basically all the superlatives) was tremendous in planning two unbelievable events for us.

First, we had my baby shower at the restaurant. After 3pm, Kristina and her team transformed the restaurant into a wonderful hosting space. Many of the pastries she serves regularly at the restaurant, she made miniature versions of them and served them to the guests who attended the baby shower. With her team, that includes the wonderful Paola who helps run the restaurant during the week, she served horderves, tea and was able to accomodate guests who did not drink tea. (She served pepsi for one of her guests from a pot so that it wouldn’t ruin the tea theme. Truly, a professional move.) Overall, we all had a wonderful experience. So much so, when we had only two weeks left for planning our wedding weekend, we realized we had completely forgotten about catering for our goodbye brunch and Kristina came to our rescue!

We were able to contact Kristina and within a few days, with some helpful suggestions, she was able to plan our entire menu for the event. The food was delivered to Living Roots promptly on the day of the event and Mad Hatter did not disappoint. One of the best things about Mad Hatter is that there are gluten free options throughout her menu which satisfied a number of our guests. Everyone raved about the food and we were able to serve a variety of options to our guests. Also, due to the fact that we went over the estimated guest count, we did run out of coffee and orange juice. But because they are a restaurant as well, we were able to coordinate in real time for her team to drop off more coffee and orange juice for our event and it was delivered with immediacy.

I am truly in awe of Kristina, Paola and her team at Mad Hatter. They are truly amazing and wonderful people to not only work with but be associated with when it comes to event planning. Kristina is so generous with her time and such an amazing businesswoman. She handled herself with such professionalism and I am so glad we could have 2 of our biggest events this year with Mad Hatter. Thank you so much Mad Hatter team! We cannot wait to dine...

I went with a few friends for their high tea service a few days ago, and compared to the one time I went 4 years ago, I was very disappointed. They’ve recently changed the way their tea service works and they did tell me ahead of time when confirming my reservation, but they did not specify what changed, and I admit that not asking for details was my fault. And I give them credit for being accommodating of the fact that one of the people in my party arrived late.

The disappointing change was the lack of choice. When I went years ago, you were able to choose your tea sandwich flavors, your pastries, etc, and everything was brought in stages. Now, the only choice you get to make is the flavor of tea you want. Everything else is chosen for you. And it’s not like we could request for certain items/ingredients to be left out; they no longer have a high tea menu available on their website so we had no clue what was going to be served. All 3 of the tea sandwiches were foods I dislike, if a menu had been provided online I could have requested alternatives in advance. In addition to that, the mini tiered pink cakes we were served were incredibly dense and the buttercream was hard. The scones, petit four cakes, and jam cookies were all fine. They also claim they serve clotted cream but it’s just philadelphia whipped cream cheese; not sure if this claim had changed since they took the menu down.

The service was okay. Like I said above, one of my party members arrived late and they were accommodating, and it was very busy, but once she arrived and ordered her tea, they brought the hot water for her tea, but she sat with no tea leaves for around 15-20 minutes.

In addition, I ran into a work friend while there. Later at work we caught up, and she claims she was equally disappointed, and when she brought this to the attention of the owner, the owner didn’t seem to give her feedback any mind and told her “you should have requested that ingredients were substituted”. Again, there was no menu online like there used to be, we had no idea what we would be served.

All in all, the high tea service was disappointing compared to my first visit, though it was a long time ago. Don’t think I’ll be back for high tea, but heard great things about their regular...