Coral Tree Tea House — Restaurant in San Diego

I came for afternoon tea for my birthday. I'm vegan with multiple food allergies. It can make finding places that can accommodate my dietary needs challenging. We called and made reservations for Queen's Tea about a week in advance and let them know of my dietary issues. They said they were able to accommodate us so we were hopeful.

They seated us right away and had a pot of tea already on the table. It was a coconut black tea. I can't drink caffeine so I wanted to order another tea. They were out of about half of the non-caffeinated teas but had a decent amount to choose from. Here comes the first downside: they didn't come back for about 10 minutes to tell us about the teas but they didn't take our tea order. Someone else dropped of our fruit salad and left without taking our order. They finally took our tea order after we had been there for 30 minutes.

They next served our food. Even though we asked for the Queen's tea, we didn't get it served on the tier tray, just all of the food on one plate. It had 2 tea sandwiches (same filling but one on white and the other on whole wheat), sweet potato puffs, a spring roll (which I'm not 100% was vegan), a small salad, a small chocolate brownie, 3 bite sized cookies, and a shot glass of berries. We also didn't get any scones, which is pretty standard in any tea service. I'm disappointed in the types of food served as it wasn't traditional (especially compared to the other tables). I understand that vegan changes a lot but I've been to many different afternoon teas and they have been much more traditional.

Now our tea didn't come out until about 30 minutes AFTER our food and they didn't have any non-dairy milk.

Overall, not happy with the service, the food was underwhelming, we didn't get scones or a 3 tier tray, the tea was served WAY too late.

I would have preferred they warn us ahead of time that the experience was going to be so different and they weren't able to accommodate certain things (non dairy milk for the tea, a full tea experience). Not to mention we payed full price for it (over $100...

Absolutely horrific experience. We went there to celebrate a birthday with friends. The tea house got great reviews so we figured it would be a great afternoon. We couldn't have been more wrong. The owner of the tea house (cannot remember her name) could not have been more rude to us. We rented out one of the tea rooms and wanted to re-arrange the tables so that we could all sit together at one table (seemed like a reasonable request). She told us, "you can do it yourself". She repeatedly embarrassed us in front of our friends throughout the afternoon. Their menu stated that lemon curd was available upon request. One of our friends called ahead to request lemon curd and the owner was extremely rude to them even though they were just following the tea room's request. When we asked about the lemon curd during our tea service, they said they had only one left. When they brought it out, it was still frozen and they told us, "just wait a bit, it'll thaw" (still wasn't thawed by the time tea was over). So as to not make a scene in front of our friends, we called the tea room to discuss our terrible experience with the owner. Instead of apologizing, she proceeded to admonish me for all of the above and stated this was our fault, not their's. I demanded the service fee be reimbursed to me as the service was terrible. She told me they did not have a computer and did not have an itemized receipt. I found this strange for a business operating in 2024. After significant effort, we were reimbursed. But still no remorse on their part. We will never be returning to the tea room and I would highly recommend you consider going elsewhere...

Every year we visit CA, my daughters and I have afternoon tea here. The service, attention, and fare is above and beyond consistently. The house is on beautiful historic property as well, making for wonderful photo opportunities ❤️

Udate: we had a very disappointing visit today. We look forward to this all year, and our experience today was tiring short of a letdown. For starters, it took far too long to reach anyone to make reservations before arriving. The mailbox was full every time I called for weeks. For a venue that is only open on weekends by reservation only, we were concerned before finally reaching someone. We were seated in a small room with a floor fan full blast at our table. It felt like being seated in a typhoon, and I asked politely several times to turn it down or point it elsewhere. It would get turned down, and then someone would come in and turn it all the way up again. It hurt my eyes terribly. I was literally crying when I asked yet again to move to fan or move tables. The lady snapped at me rudely, and honestly our table wasn't really being checked on to begin with. It felt like we were being moved through as quickly as possible, none of the typical warmth or friendly energy. Terrible and disappointing experience. Next year, for the money, we will try Shakespeare's tea. They have a beautiful new venue, are open almost everyday, and have never treated us badly. Their royal tea is actually less expensive than Coral Tree's...