Yauatcha and Liberty

Chief amongst the joys of the freelancer’s lifestyle is to simply disappear (it's also one of the few things we have in common with builders). Have your usual clients forgotten your name in the haze of the office Christmas party? Have you had enough of working fourteen hour days, enviable problem though that may be? Well, then... it's tea time.  

Tea time, you say? I don't drink tea. I prefer coffee. To which I can only respond - then you, dear sir, or madam, are part of the problem.


Coffee break = sad dreary life in an office. Tea time = good things to eat, a mild high, and an actual TIME OF DAY, which appeals to my OCD side. So, tea it is.


Mr. Things, my usual companion in these late-afternoon dips out of the work day, shares my interest in what we’ve come to call the ‘tea binge’.  Unlike the ladies (and gents) of yore, we don’t stop for tea often - hence its treat status - but when we do, IT STAYS STOPPED!   We’re talking multiple cake courses, two different pots, the whole schlemiel.  

Because, in today’s London, if you’re going for tea, it’s a bit of a commitment.  There’s no longer a tea room on every corner.  Sure, you can get tea - acceptably hot, ALWAYS with milk from the neighborhood caff, your order filled halfway up the styrofoam cup and topped up with boiling water from the coffee machine.  It’s been stewing so long, it’s officially tea concentrate.  Or you can get your fix at any of the chains of faux Italian coffee shops - problem being that the water they use is too too hot, and cooks the tannins in the tea rather than simply releasing them.  Cue one giant serving of bitter regret.  Not good.

When Mr. T (the slightly smaller Caucasian one) and I seek out tea, it tends to be in one of the few remaining corners of the capitol where tea is taken a bit too seriously.  Large, loose leaves shaken into a teapot made before 1971 (or by artisan hands after 2007), cakes baked on the premises, people of leisure chatting in a gently caffeinated way.  These tea enjoyment venues tend to be quite far from the Tube, in places like Barnes or Stoke Newington.  People who live in neighborhoods like these - by virtue of cash, in the case of the former, or by demand of constitution, in the latter - have chosen to pull back from Flash London, into Twee London.  

Twee London is Tea London.  And that’s where we usually want to be.

But today, we’re in the heart of the Flash.  Liberty - in full Christmas-shop frenzy.  Erm...how did this happen, again?

Bit of a long story, that.  

For a few years now, I’d reckon that the best place to get tea if you’re stranded in Flash London is...Alan Yau’s “You can have the table from 8 until 9, but ONLY until 9” electric blue temple of dim sum - YAUATCHA.  When my husband, who works in W12 and hugs the Central Line as closely as possible at all times, took me there for our anniversary, I initially balked.  Too smart, too expensive.  Didn’t look like good value on the menu - something like £28 for an afternoon tea!  (Have I mentioned we try not to spend too much on a tea binge? We're freelancers, not Rockefellers.)  But we went, and... the courses KEPT COMING.  That tea was enough for my husband and I, to the point of being overly full, and each course - the chocolate chip scones, the fruit, the dim sum, the chocolates, the macarons - was of the highest quality.

At this point I should probably unmask myself as an American.  I know what 'overly full' really feels like. I also don’t mind mixing afternoon tea with dim sum.  What are finger sandwiches, except British dim sum?  Both are eaten with tea, both are tasty. And I don’t mind having blue tea - or white tea, or green tea, or freakin' sencha genmai cha - instead of Earl Grey.  But, apparently, a lot of other people did. Because, after a long, proud run - well, long-ish, but very proud - YAUATCHA HAVE STOPPED DOING SET TEAS.

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And what they are serving....well, it’s very nice....but £7.50 for a piece of cake, however glamorously decorated, is just too much for me. After splitting a pot of blue tea and four macarons (perfectly pleasant, but not the substantial tea we were looking for), it was time to move on.  Goodbye, Yauatcha....FOREVER.  

This left Mr. Things and I in unknown territory - we’d never left a tea venue in protest!  And a two-location tea is unheard of in the history of the Tea Binge.  We might as well have made a costume change, it felt so decadent.  Let’s be clear - we didn’t want to spend twice our tea budget - but considering Yauatcha’s cruel jettisoning of the set teas, we had no other choice.  We were still hungry!  
And so, we recovered our senses, and found our way to the ground-floor tea room at Liberty, the old standby.  Neither of us had ever been, so...why not?

First difference with Yauatcha - though both serve food, only the Liberty tea room smelled like an airplane during the meal service. The second blow - the cake was almost as expensive!  Slight comedown to £5.95, but still.  THIS HAD BETTER BE SOME CAKE.

Luckily for Liberty’s international reputation (which could have been brutally injured by my little blog, I’m sure) the cakes were...amazing.  Whoever thought of pairing coffee walnut cake with a dainty filllip of clotted cream is actually a genius.  A real one!  Mr. Thing’s pear tart was pretty nice, and benefited from my generous donation of half the clotted cream.  When my husband turned up, there was plenty for him to share.  And Liberty is, of course, the best place in central London to buy expensive but bracingly cool gifts, which is very important at this time of year.  Or so it would be, if we hadn’t spent all of our money on tea.  

We give the ground floor tearoom at Liberty three teapots out of five, on the strength of the very hospitable head waitress and the sublime cakes.  Well done!


Yauatcha
15 Broadwick St
London W1F 0DL
020 7494 8888

Tea Room at Liberty
Regent Street
London W1B 5AH
Directions