My second London tea shop crawl targeted the Mayfair/Picadilly area. When you’re only in London for about a week, and you’re working during the days, you have to be strategic and take advantage of any extra time you can find to fit in tea! Like I could take advantage of Thursday being a late night shopping night.
Lucky for me, by starting up at Bond Street station I could walk to the shops in order of which ones closed first to last (I love it when a plan comes together!)
First stop: Postcard Teas off of New Bond Street.
Postcard Teas is tucked away in a side street, but stands out for its approach – that is, you can read about the small farms from which each tea comes. I love the packaging as well – the silver cannisters with creative visuals.
I went in and asked about black teas for afternoon that go well with milk, and walked out with selections from Japan and India – “London Roast” blend (a unique preparation – roasted in the UK, blending teas from Japan, India, and Australia), “Supernatural Black” from Japan, an Indian “Summer Darjeeling” and an “English Breakfast” blended from Japan and Indian teas.
Second stop: East India Tea Company on Conduit Street. It’s just a short walk from Postcard Teas, closer to Regent Street than New Bond, but easy to find.
East India is a beautiful store – some of the china and tea paraphernalia are absolutely gorgeous and exotic. I loved their sort of “quilted”-look tins, and bought an empty one to use with any of my loose teas.
Enjoyed trying different teas they had brewed around the store, and you could smell any of them that you wanted, with small smelling jars next to the different flavors. The range of teas is quite wide, but I did have to watch my budget a bit, so walked out with Assam, and an Orange Pekoe from Ceylon, “Royal Flush.”
And last stop for my Thursday night long shop: Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly! F&M is one of my “usual haunts” – I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to London and didn’t stop into F&M to peruse the tea in their beautiful tins, tea towels, tea biscuits, or contemplate putting together a Fortnum afternoon tea basket full of all my favorite hand-picked items.
My current F&M favorite tea is their “Queen Anne” blend, which I’ve had in their tea lounge at previous afternoon teas. Otherwise, I tend to stock up on the blends in their octagon-ish shaped tea tins – this time there was a new one called “Explorer’s tea” that I just had to pick up.
This time I found they had done quite a bit of changing up of the first floor tea area (2nd floor for us Americans, as it is not the ground floor!). There is now an area where one can try teas at times throughout the day, and a whole area where teapots cover the walls and tea sets from Wedgewood and other are available to purchase or, in my case this time, just ooh and aah over!
This was the ideal place to end my Thursday night tea shop crawl – I recommend a stop at any of these places for anyone looking for some great ideas for tea!
From here, on to Covent Garden area for my last tea shop crawl outing on this London trip….
Very Nearly Teatime 
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