Chinese Tea House at Marble House — Restaurant in Newport

Humiliating and unwelcoming doesn't begin to convey what my husband and I felt. Please read the details of the email I sent to their Contact Us address below:

"...dissatisfying experience this afternoon that left my husband and I feeling unwelcomed, rushed, and uncomfortable at The Tea House.

Please bear in mind that this was our first experience, we are a biracial alternative couple and this was a small celebration for my husband's 32nd birthday. We wore our best clothing; suit jacket and chiffon dress and all due to this being a special occasion.

Booked a tea time for 1pm at the Tea House on 11/23 and confirmed via Resy, specifying my husband's birthday and requesting a small birthday treat if possible. I heard that they do celebrate birthdays and it allured me to booking. Plus, we are in the middle of a move and wanted something light on our stomachs.

As we head into the Marble House grounds at 1:02, after checking in with the customer service booth and ticket station, we were screamed at by a security guard as we were making our way to our reservation at the Tea House. We didn't realize he was yelling at us until we were half across the lawn and guests started staring at us around the grounds as we walked towards the Tea House.

He screams, 'Where do you think you are going? Where is your tickets?!"

Mind you, again- we are across the property. I shout back that we have a reservation, and he sneered back with " Yeah, sure just checking." All the while other guests were wondering around us and walking through the gate behind him. Staring at us...This was easily one of the most humiliating circumstances of my life, being a hispanic woman and someone just trying to celebrate her husband's birthday.

We arrive and was informed by Shannon that all 1pm reservations will not be sat yet. We weren't sat until 1:30, and we left at 2:20 mind you.

After finally being sat the following occured:

-There was no mention of my husband's birthday at all during our rushed and disengaged experience. I attached a copy of my resy info for you to review. Our entrees came out 5 minutes after our tea tower, and we still had no tea- which did not arrive for another 20 minutes, considerably later after the parties around us.

Not only this, our side plates were about to be moved after our first 2 bites of the tea tower, where the Maitre d', Shannon, said that they were just trying to make room. From which I remarked about the status of our tea. The interaction felt dismissive and left my husband and I confused about why we were expected to be ready for entrees after just receiving our tea tower yet no tea within our first 15 minutes.

The food was so middle of the road with several blips, but it was the pace and lack of consideration that made this an awful experience. While my roasted salmon was lukewarm, the arugula salad accompaniment was yellow and wilted, the raspberries on our tower were moldy, and my husband's beet salad was wilted, the atmosphere and service left us unwelcomed and alienated among the other guests, who appeared to be treated far kinder than we were.

Our server, Ema, albeit very kind- was ill informed about our tea tower offerings, and did not offer additional drinks. Again, very kind but did not seem educated on her job or our inquiries.

-The porters never stopped to refill our waters until I asked, despite circling the facility multiple times.

-My husband used the male's restroom and it was unkept and unsanitary with urination on the floor.

This was an awful experience that left us feeling disregarded, harassed and alienated from the aesthetics of the guests around us. I am sharing this in the hopes that you inform your staff on how their impact carries into people's lives. We don't splurge often and we are navigating a difficult time with job relocation, so this experience was supposed to be a delightful memory. Unfortunately it feels like an abysmal regret of uninviting disposition.

Thank you and I look forward to...

Such a cute tea room. Food is just okay as many others have mentioned. The service, though, was really not great. When we sat down, our server offered us the welcome drink (champagne or a mocktail). We chose the mocktail and placed our order for teas at the same time. The welcome drink never came - which is fine tbh, but taken with the other interactions it’s just a bit annoying. We ordered coffees a bit later on, so I thought maybe that’s why they didn’t bring the welcome drink, but I’m not sure. Our server asked us if there were any dietary restrictions he should know about and not expecting the tea tower to have any non-vegetarian items, I said no even though my family is vegetarian. When the tea sandwiches came out, there were two chicken salad sandwiches. We weren’t upset at all and I apologized right from the start when asking if there was any replacement option for the chicken, admitting I “wasn’t thinking” and forgot to mention we are vegetarian, and “no worries if there’s nothing else, we just won’t eat it, it’s okay.” When the server I asked about this went to tell our main server, our main server came to our table and huffily said “That’s why I asked you if there were dietary restrictions.” Right. Again, I apologized for the inconvenience. They took the tower away and came back with one less chicken salad and added a cucumber sandwich. We weren’t sure if it was a mixup, and we took a few minutes really looking at the sandwich to figure out if it was still in fact the chicken salad. Very politely, my husband asked if it was still chicken and our sever (again, huffily) asked, “So you’re both vegetarian?” Like…yes? He never asked if it was one of the other of us who were vegetarian and I said “we” when we first asked. He was clearly so annoyed with us that we were just like it’s fine and didn’t ask for a replacement.

I never leave reviews and I get that this is kinda silly, but my husband and I are always really decent (I think!) when at restaurants. We probably over apologize whenever asking for anything and never complain. I feel like our server just assumed we were not nice people and treated us with disdain the...

Do NOT do this at marble house. I know sometimes restaurants have off days, so I’m willing to give some grace but service was off for us the entire time. My group of friends (which was noticeably different from the basically all white clientele), was sat and we were forgotten about for 30 minutes. My friend asked a server for water hoping that would actually remind them gently that we were there and we still got no service. We watched as other people were sat after us and waited on before us. I had to go to the hostess and ask for service before it was provided. The service starts: we’re putting in our orders and things are beginning to arrive. We’re swarmed by wasps and Yellowjackets. This is not the first time I’m sure this place has served in the summer, why wouldn’t you try to close some of the door ways to the huge bushes and trees around this place? We were swarmed the entirety of our meal by wasps (our neighbors at the other table suffered as well), with little regard from servers about what was going on. The wasps also swarmed and crawled all over the food. Our tea was forgotten and we weren’t served until the entree section.

My friend asked for our bill to be comped a little bit for all of the inconveniences on top of the wasps and the waitress misunderstood her and just gave us more glasses of champagne. I’m also looking at my credit card bill and I now have $306 charged to my card when I didn’t tip and the bill came up to 284…..if there’s automatic gratuity that wasn’t disclosed to me. I will be going through efforts to get my money back especially because of the signed difference and charge amount.

And to top it all off: my friend got food poisoning from this place. The food all came out in 5 minutes, which tells me it’s not being prepared even close to semi-fresh, which is understandable to a degree. However, I deeply question the food safety of this place. I’m sure it’s under a heat lamp for hours and not put back in the refrigerator. My friend promptly got food poisoning from the shortrib a few hours after (the shortrib that’s an extra 8 dollar surplus on top of the 65 dollars mind you). Would...