The Kate Pearl Tea Room — Restaurant in Maryland

3 stars for the lacking service and tiny serving sizes.

"Full Afternoon Tea" Service.

I reserved a table for two at the Westminster location, and arrived on time for the final seating at 3pm. My tea guest and I were seated promptly and given tea menus by the receptionist, but we did not have our server, Jonas, come and take our orders until 3:15. He was quite reticent and didn't offer recommendations, but my guest and I are familiar with tea so it didn't matter.

We received our tea pots and scone at 3:25, along with a small bowl of whipped cream that they called 'clotted cream'. Jonas asked if we would like cream, sugar, or honey with our teas, and I requested cream and sugar. I'm not sure why it wasn't brought to the table with the tea. The scone was warm, and strawberry matcha flavored. It was rather dry and hard at the bottom, likely from being kept warm in the oven.

We did not receive any cream, sugar, or visit to the table in the time it took to finish almost two full cups of tea and most of our scone. My tea guest eventually got up and requested sugar & additional whipped cream from the receptionist.

(Of note, there were only two other tables occupied when we arrived, and they both left before we even received our teas.)

At 3:44, our second course arrived, and we AGAIN requested the sugar/extra cream, and received a bowl of sugar cubes with an apology that the kitchen was out of 'clotted cream'. Fair enough. My tea "Nut Crunch" was much improved with a bit of sugar, although it lacked the cream I never received.

Almost as soon as our soups were served, Jonah came back with small bowls of salad; extras from the kitchen. The "Carrot Ginger" soup topped with apple chips, was very salty and vinegary, while my guest enjoyed it as is, I crumbled in part of a sugar cube to make it palatable. As for the complementary salads, I'm not sure if dressing was supposed to be served alongside, but they were without a drop.

The third course, the sweet, savory, and 'fruit' tiered plate came out at about 3:55. Jonas gave us a faithful recitation of all the tiers, and then left. Truthfully, most of the items on the plates were delicious, albeit extremely tiny-- one or two small bites each.

My tea guest didn't care for the strange icing on the carrot cake, while I didn't like the "Birds' Nest" cookie. (shredded wheat cereal & chocolate, with coconut creme eggs)

The 'Texas Caviar' crostini and carrot cake square were both unremarkable, as was the orange slice and half of a strawberry.

The best bites were the cucumber dill open-faced sandwich, the ham and cheese puff pastry, blueberry cheese panini and the raspberry topped pudding/crema.

Additionally with our check, we received a spoonful of ice cream topped with a chocolate pearl.

In conclusion, my tea guest and I greatly enjoyed the TEA, and notably not much else with this tea service.

Most of the sweets & savories could fit on a soup spoon with room to spare. Soup was gone in 3 bites. Salad was undressed. No milk or sugar on the table. Insufficient whipped cream, and no other spreads for two people's scones.

Additionally, after this experience I checked the images of the tea service on both the Kate Pearl website and their google page and found them to show plates with far larger portions. Four savories per person instead of 3, and sandwiches made with TWO slices of bread-- a luxury we were not privy to. I included those pictures with mine.

I was embarrassed to have brought my tea guest to such a disappointing service. Next time I will just go to the tea at Beans in the Belfry, since they actually serve what Kate Pearl has in...

On 8/2/23 I called and left a message to make a reservation at the Sykesville location. A few hours later at 12:49 on 8/2/23, I received a call back. The lady I spoke with explained that the Sykesville location, formerly Sweet Simplictea, had recently been purchased by The Kate Pearl Tea Room. She went over several details that were also on the voicemail recording when I had left my message. I told her we wanted the Royal Tea service for 6 people on 8/26/23 at noon and it was to celebrate my friends upcoming wedding. All was confirmed. On the morning of August 26th I called the Kate Pearl Tea Room as a courtesy and left a message to let them know that one of our guest could no longer attend as one of their family members had been hospitalized. A few hours later I received a call back from Renee stating they had no reservation for our us and that the Sykesville location was fully booked for a bridal shower. I was SO UPSET. I had one guest almost to MD from NJ and the bride was driving from VA. At first, Renee seemed to almost accuse me of not making a reservation. I assured her that I most certainly did and it was NOT with the prior owners as I called and received the voicemail stating about the buyout and also could send a screenshot from my phone of the callback I received. Then she asked if I was certain I made a reservation and didn't just say I would call back.......um no. I made a reservation. She told me she would call the owner and call me back. She called me back and offered to put as at the Westminster location at 1:30. I called our guests to see if everyone could change their time. Everyone agreed but it would affect how long a few guests could stay because some had other engagements later in the day. Renee assured me both on the phone and in person that they would make the tea "as special as possible". We all arrived and the table looked lovely and tea selection was really nice. Our server was kind and gave suggestions on teas. The entire process took incredibly long though. In between each course we would wait a long time for the next item to come out. We had to go ask at one point to bring the next course out. The food was tasty and the teas were good. I do think our bride had a nice time. I was disappointed that they didn't do anything to make it "special" as they implied they would for the giant inconvenience they caused. We had to change locations, time and I had to spend my morning frantically making phone calls to rearrange everything. The time/location change also cut into our time together. I thought surely when they said they would make it special this meant maybe an extra dessert or treat for the bride. It was literally the regular menu we ordered. Nothing special. The experience at the tearoom just didn't make up for the stress, time and location change we had to deal with. I would...

This was my first time at Kate Pearl and I have been to other tea houses before like Reynolds Tavern in Annapolis. I love a great tea time.

I highly recommend the lemon scone that was served first, it is absolutely amazing and was warm. Cannot rave enough about it and wished the rest of the service had been to that standard of food.

We arrived and entered the house with the smell of mildew hitting me in the entry. The extensive amount of teas on the shelves is amazing and I was excited for the experience. We headed upstairs and the original wooden floors from the house are there and it is a sight to see if you like historic homes. We were seated by a quaint window and the room was decorated in magnolia's. The table cloth was magnolia's but I was concerned on when it was changed as there was sugar remnants on the table cloth. We waited fifteen minutes before our server greeted us at our table, and apologized for the wait as she has too many tables. We placed our orders for tea and then the next wait began. Service is extremely slow. The highlight of the tea time other than my company was the lemon scone and the tea was nice.

Service here is slow and lacking. Felt like someone playing tea time as a child rather than knowing what they are doing in serving a proper tea. We accidentally spilled the cream on the table and used our two cloth napkins to clean it up, we left them sitting where it was spilled and told our server when she came up what had happened. She just sat the teapots ontop of the napkins and went away. One would think you would get clean napkins and the napkins soaked in cream would be taken away. Our tea kettles were switched and I started with the tea that my other half ordered. You are told that you can try different teas during the course of the service but that was never offered and when your server appears it is very brief to clear dishes and set the next course. We started with the lemon scone, highly recommend. The next course was what was called a soup, it was a smoothie in a bowl. It was a berry/mango soup but it looked like a smoothie that I would make for my children, totally underwhelmed. The next course was the sandwiches, quiche and sweets. You can prepare better of these at home. The quiche was an amuse-bouche, gone in one bite and not good. This day it was a bacon, jalapeno quiche bit which had the rubber consistency of food reheated in the microwave and not fresh from an oven. I have had better store bought frozen quiche than this. The cucumber bites, chicken salad sandwiches and the sweets were lack luster. Total waste of food and small portions. The raspberry sorbet was good. Overall, I would not recommend this tea room. There is a lot of work that needs to be done on the food, service and overall upkeep inside. There is so much potential, it...