THE choices read like chapters in a children’s book: Margaret’s Hope, Empress of Japan, Sweet Endings. At the Greenport Tea Company, you can even act like a kid in a candy store, lifting the lids on glass jars to inhale the aroma of these exotic-sounding teas.
Roughly 50 jars line a long shelf on the retail side of this cafe and shop dedicated to the pleasure of steeping — don’t call it brewing — and drinking first-rate loose-leaf tea. The proprietors, Jan Kirwan and Jenette Holloway, even blend some of their own, including Sweet Endings, which has irresistible scents of caramel, chocolate and vanilla.
That’s no substitute for dessert, however, at this charming spot in the heart of the North Fork seaport. A bevy of sweets — chocolate-covered profiteroles, lemon curd tarts, iced brownies — fills the bottom tier of an afternoon tea service that also includes fresh fruit and a ruffled mound of whipped cream. On the upper two tiers: biscuitlike scones with Devonshire-style cream and jam and pillowy finger sandwiches.
Pausing for a proper afternoon tea is particularly appealing this time of year. After braving the shopping mall mobs, after hunting down a parking space, there’s something soothingly civilized about pouring a cup of steaming, amber tea from a personal pot.
Civility is certainly the order of the day at Robinson’s Tea Room, a doily of a shop in the heart of Stony Brook Village Center. All lace curtains and silk flowers, Robinson’s is the incarnation of innumerable pretend tea parties Loretta Vertucci held as a child.
Ms. Vertucci, whose 9-year-old shop bears her maiden name, works here alongside her husband, Jimmy Vertucci, the Tea Room’s chef.
In the Robinsons’ three-tier tea service, the super-moist scones are the show-stopper. They’re served warm with fresh clotted cream and raspberry jam. You can choose from a lengthy list of teas, which come loose-leaf or bagged, depending on availability. The “house tea” is a bagged Scottish Breakfast tea by Harrisons & Crosfield, an English tea merchant.
It’s all loose-leaf at Witches’ Brew Coffee House in West Hempstead, which despite the name is serious about its tea. In this converted house built in 1902, instead of floral patterns, there are high-backed velvet sofas, mismatched coffee tables and a soft orange glow radiating from strings of chunky light bulbs you might only consider hanging at Halloween. Call it benign goth.
The owners, Alabama and Lulo Miceli, who are sisters, offer a four-page tea menu including everything from white tea (made from tea buds picked in the first days of spring) to red tea (actually rooibois, a South African herb that’s not tea at all). The menu is a bit chaotic, but it’s flush with information — so do call over a guide.
You can’t get three-tier afternoon tea service at Witches’ Brew, but you can order a tantalizing array of desserts, including fluffy pumpkin pie and gooey graham cracker s’mores. Your tea arrives at your table in beautiful little cast-iron pots, and you can curl up on a sofa for hours.
If it’s a formal affair you’re after, however, the reservation to make is for Saturday afternoon tea in the handsome Polo Restaurant at the Garden City Hotel. The small but choice list of tea includes a smooth Formosa Oolong, to be poured through a silver strainer into a fine china cup.
The three-tier traditional tea service includes scones with house-made preserves, tea sandwiches on fresh-baked bread and miniature pastries that are as impressive to look at as they are to taste.
For a unique teatime twist, though, order the Chocolate Tea service. In addition to tea sandwiches, scones and desserts, it comes with a pot of rich Belgian hot chocolate that you thin to taste with a separate pot of warm milk. It also comes with a flaky brioche that conceals a molten chocolate filling.
The hotel’s executive chef, Steven DeBruyn, who is Belgian, says the hot chocolate is a blend he’s made since childhood. But it was his desire to make seasonal preserves, like strawberry-basil and vanilla-fig, that inspired him to resurrect a formal tea at the hotel in 1997.
“I wanted it to be traditional,” he said on a recent Saturday. “I wanted it to make you feel rich and part of the bourgeoisie.”
GARDEN CITY Polo Restaurant, Garden City Hotel, 45 Seventh Street; (516) 747-3000. Tea on Saturdays, 3 to 5 p.m., $29 for traditional tea, $34 for Chocolate Tea, $39 for Royal Tea (with glass of Champagne); reservations required.
GREENPORT Greenport Tea Company, 119A Main Street; (631) 477-8744. Open daily in December except on Christmas: Sunday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tea service for two, $25.75. Ą la carte, pot of tea, $2.25; assorted miniature pastries, $6.50.
STONY BROOK Robinson’s Tea Room, Stony Brook Village Center, 97 E, Main Street; (631) 751-1232. Open Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Reserve at least 24 hours in advance for three-tier afternoon tea, $25 a person.
WEST HEMPSTEAD Witches’ Brew Coffee House, 311 Hempstead Turnpike; (516) 489-9482. Open Tuesday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 a.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.; Sunday, 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. Ą la carte: pot of tea, $2.50 small, $4.50 large; desserts, about $3.75 to $5.50.
