Afternoon tea in Berlin at TeeTeaThé

Although in the last months I focused exclusively on luxury afternoon tea options, in Berlin and not only, I decided a couple of weeks ago to find out an affordable high tea menu in the city. After some enquiries among my tea lover friends and some personal research, I headed to TeeTeaThé for spending some time outdoors in the sun. It is situated relatively close to the U-Bahn Eisenacherstrasse, on a street with many interesting coffees, small restaurants and bookstores. 

Although the indoors space looks quite well maintained, the outside tables - around 3 - are a bit worned out. As the good weather lasts only a few days the year, the outdoors furniture was not considered a great investment. For the beginning, I ordered a Mangosonne black tea, a Ronnefeld tea rich in fruity juicy aromas with a predominant mango flavour that makes you forget the strong influence of the black tea. It was brought with a small blue hourglass that helped me calculate when it is the right time to drink the tea. The difference between the cold and warm tea was pretty big, and I did regret for not drinking my tea faster.  

 In addition to the coffee space, there is also a big room distributing various teas as well as colourful cups.

With so many colourful options, it is difficult to make a right choice of the best cup. For the long waiting time, the guests are offered the possibility to read some of the latest publications in English, many of them with topics related to food and expat life in Berlin. 

The classical tiered plates were brought a big late, after the tea was already cold. Although the overall composition respected the classical formula of afternoon tea, everything was prepared without the smallest care for the little details. Slices of apple, not very fresh, some veggies threw up around the plate, salmon sandwiches prepared in the haste. The quiche with corn, eggs and peas was fresh, but without a special taste. The scones were fresh too, most probably the best element of the afternoon tea, and so was the jam.

If the meal as such was more or less edible and the tea was unique, the service was very unfriendly, with long time of waiting between the tea and the afternoon tea and some out of order remarks and attitudes. Maybe I should give a new try a next time, probably during the winter, at least for trying a new tea sort.