Crest Hill Tea Room — Restaurant in The Plains

I am a big fan of afternoon tea and whenever I venture to a new city, having tea is "must-do" on the itinerary. Unfortunately in the DC area, most of the hotels only offer afternoon tea on the weekends (when I work) and I have already experienced tea at my usual haunts (Teaism, Ching Ching Cha, Lady Camellia, House of Steep) quite a few times. My boyfriend took me here for my birthday. He wanted to take me to a new tea house and they happen to be open on Thursdays! We have been to Middleburg for wine tastings but this was our first time to The Plains. Street parking was limited but not too difficult to find a spot in the middle of the weekday.

Crest Hill Antiques is a house that divided into two rooms: the "living room" is where they house furniture, trinkets, and tea ware for sale. The "dining room" is the tea room. There are only a few tables, so I would recommend making a reservation. This tea room is more of a casual rather than a formal tea. The menu consists of soups, sandwiches, and tea sets--you can order afternoon tea or a pot of tea (small individual pots or a large pot to share) and scones. The staff, to some extent, can make a customized sandwich, as we witnessed with the guests sitting near us. We decided to order "Nibbles for Everyone", which is a 3-tiered tray that had sliced cheese and crackers, sliced veggies, sliced fruits, and a small selection of tea sandwiches and pastries. The sandwiches were ham, cucumber dill, and pimento cheese. The miniature desserts included lemon curd cupcake, cheesecake, eclair, what looks like a cream puff that had blueberry jam in the middle, a brownie, and a molten chocolate cake. My favorite desserts were the delicious puffy thing and the chocolate items.

As mentioned, this is not a gourmet tea menu but it was wonderful experience due to the cozy ambiance. You can chit chat and linger over a cuppa for as long as you want and the staff does not rush you. When you are given a preview of your bill, you need to write down the gratuity on the bill, as they unable to process separate charges for credit card gratuities. They have some of the teas available for purchase, as well. If you are a large party (say 5 or more), I would advise making reservations, as they only have four tables in the tea room. However, I think this tea room is a better place to catch up with a girlfriend or have a one-on-one conversation. For tea enthusiasts, their tea menu primarily consists of tea blends, and they have current and back issues of Victoria and Tea Time magazine you can pore...

A family member recommended the Tea Room to me a few months back, and I finally decided to try it out with my best friend this weekend. We made a reservation for Sunday afternoon and planned our entire day to lead up to this experience. We arrived a few minutes early (10-15 minutes) as a large party was finishing their event. We thought there was a separate section for the antiques that we could explore until our reservation time. When we entered the building, there was no waiting room or separate area to look at or purchase antiques. We stood there waiting for someone to acknowledge us, but the staff ignored us entirely until my friend flagged someone down after we'd been standing there for 5 minutes (it's an open space so it's not like they could pretend they didn't see us). We were greeted with, "What do you want?" When we told the woman we had a reservation, she looked at the clock on the wall, looked back at us, and said, "You're early. I can't seat you for another 10 minutes. You need to leave and come back." No pleasantries. No apologies for asking us to come back. Nothing. I felt so unwelcome, that I didn't even want to go back inside after we walked out. We decided that if they were willing to treat us that way as a first impression, they didn't deserve our business. I'm just so disappointed because as a tea enthusiast, I had been looking forward to this all weekend long. Hopefully this bad customer service was a fluke, but I can say that I will never be returning to the Tea Room or recommending them to...

A cross between a tradition British tea room (with the eclectic furnishings and intentionally mismatched place settings) and a country cafe. The Crest Hill Tea Room offers a variety of dining options including a monthly themed tea, a proper High Tea with soup or salad and other more filling dishes, a Traditional Afternoon Tea and a Cream Tea. For those who don’t want tea there are sandwiches, salads and soup options, plus children’s menu options. We opted for the Cream Tea for 2, which was plenty of food for a light lunch for 2 people and is served up with bottomless tea. There are so many tea options I can’t remember them all! You also have a choice of scone, so we tried the blueberry white chocolate scone and the Irish cream scone. Both were delicious! Airy and tender and served up warm with a side of cream (you also have the option of jam or curd but you must ask for it). There was also a warm apple tart, cream puffs, cheesecake, banana bread with chocolate chips, macarons, cookies and fresh fruit (grapes, blueberries, orange slices). Everything was incredibly tasty. They were setting up for a large birthday party as we were finishing so servers were distracted. Otherwise, service throughout was very good. It’s a small place, so I would recommend making reservations in advance on their website (no pre-payment required) to be sure you can get a table. Parking is on street or there’s a small lot...