Capital Tea — Restaurant in Denver

Very disappointing! Made reservations a week in advance for 2:30 pm. Most places want a credit card payment in case people are no shows and they do not loose money, which is understandable. They will give you a bill at the end of the service and you will pay then and sign the receipt. Not so here, but there is nothing that states this is the case that is different from any other place I have made a reservation. Poor service: Staff seemed to be running back and forth in the shop a lot. forgot milk, had to remind to light the candle in tea warmers, after giving us their lukewarm Noel tea, it took 20 minutes before wait staff came by to get our order for tea and then 20 minutes to get our teas and some scones, another 20 minutes for food tray, told several times the discount if you got high tea you would get for purchasing dry tea, but never came by to see what we would want to purchase, when my husband went up to the counter to order, they told him to go back and have a seat at the table, after 20 more minutes of waiting and 5:10 pm had rolled around and we still didn't have the loose tea he had asked for, I had had enough. The tea: Actually very good variety and quite tasty. Quality of food: The "hot" food on the first tier was only lukewarm when we received it at the table and the sausage roils were mini hot dogs in puff pastry. I have never seen anything like that served in any tea house before. The crust less quiche tasted good, but was too cold. The finger sandwiches were had some crust still on part of them and were not actually cut as finger sandwiches usually are. I noticed when we walked in that they were sandwiches that were just cut in half- except that when that tray had 1/2 sandwich, we got the chicken sandwich cut in thirds. Maybe they were running out of the chicken? Cleanliness: I saw crumbs on the floor right away and there was a crushed cookie right by our chairs. The tablecloth was wrinkled and the server was brushing some food off it before we sat down. The lid of my teapot had some kind of film on it and I made the mistake of moving the tarnished sugar bowl and that handle was coated with something. Atmosphere: This would be a great place to work on your computer, but NOT for high tea. Recommendation: If you want a nice cozy place to have high tea for a special occasion go up north from Capital Tea to The Denver Tea Room and you will get great service, good food and inviting atmosphere. If you just want tea and you don't care about cleanliness of the place or cozy atmosphere, this is the...

Capital Tea is about quantity over quality. The teahouse itself has a lovely, warming vibe. If you're looking for cheap, average tea, this is a great place. I would actually say the quality of the leaves is above average for Denver, and its unfortunate that we in the west still know very little of good tea when China has been drinking incredible tea for thousands of years. Capital Tea has an immense selection of teas, but in terms of actual quality, all the teas are mediocre. I have tried about 3 dozen teas from Capital Tea at this point, all across the board. Even the most expensive teas there are what would be considered low quality in the regions they were produced in, especially those from China and Japan. You can tell many of the teas are very old and have not been stored and produced correctly. Dragonwell (Long Jing) tea from China should be bright green; theirs is dark, oxidized, and stale. Sencha from Japan should be a vibrant green with a rich umami flavor; theirs is a dark brownish green with lots of stems and imperfections. Almost all their teas are very broken leaves, which is not what you're looking for in loose leaf tea, as it is of inferior quality to whole leaves. They are very rigid about their one ounce minimum, and I understand that it is a hassle to give out tea in smaller increments, but I offered to buy 30 different teas of a half ounce each, without any time limit, saying I could pick it up whenever it is ready, and they declined. I am glad Capital Tea is spreading the culture of actual loose leaf tea rather than tea bags, but they need to up their game and get some real, good quality leaves from China and Japan. If you're looking for high quality loose leaf tea in Denver, this is not the place. YAO (just down the street) had some truly incredible teas, but unfortunately they closed. If you're looking to get into the world of Chinese and Japanese teas, I recommend online shops (White2tea, Mei Leaf, Yunnan Sourcing) because there is now no shop in the Denver area that has true high quality loose leaf tea. I highly recommend exploring "gong fu cha," the art of pouring tea which maximizes the flavor of the tea which the producer intended for you to taste, specifically for Chinese teas. If you're looking for some cheap, average english/indian tea and some below average Chinese/Japanese teas, then this is...

Starting off by saying that we were served spoiled 2 day old chicken salad sandwiches that tasted rancid. When we let the staff know they let us know that it was only 2 days old chicken salad sandwich but agreed that it tasted spoiled. Want to pay 45 dollars a head for some old chicken salad, I’ve got your spot!

Our visit was September 15th and we were booked for 12:45

So getting into my full review, I’ve been to quite a few places for afternoon tea, and I wouldn’t recommend coming here for that service. I brought my mom here for a birthday afternoon tea and left really disappointed with everything from the service, cleanliness, and the spoiled old food we were served. When we got to the tea shop we sat at our table for 15 minutes before I had to get up and let them know we had our first tea order. My cup had tea still left on the bottom. It wasn’t just a stain as I was able to wipe off the brown marks. There wasn’t separate employees for serving the floor and taking the take out orders which made for a slow service. The food was underwhelming but the highlight of our bad experience was being served the spoiled chicken salad sandwiches. The table next to us hadn’t been served that and I think they served us that because we had asked for service at the beginning and I think they were frustrated. After letting them know how our sandwiches tasted off they said they tasted it in the back and were super apologetic. That gave us a 25% discount. Even still it was a truly terrible experience especially for trying to treat my mom for a nice birthday tea. All the food tasted old on top of the spoiled food that we were served. I’ll be further reporting this to the...