Uneven experience at Chalkboard's afternoon tea

Tiered tea service for three at Chalkboard

Name: Chalkboard

What: Afternoon tea, only available on Saturdays and Sundays, 2-4pm.

Review: I serve as organizer for the Chicago Tea Lovers Meetup, and was delighted when one of our members suggested the afternoon tea at Lincoln Square's Chalkboard restaurant.

Chalkboard has a lovely dining room, decorated in muted colors with antique fixtures (perfect for taking afternoon tea!). I was also impressed by their tea selection: which included Japanese, Chinese, and Indian teas, along with several herbal tisanes.

A few members of our party arrived late and Chalkboard's staff was extremely understanding and accommodated the late arrivals professionally. The servers were also knowledgeable about the menu, and were ready to recommend teas to those who asked. 

Everyone received a personal teapot filled with their choice of tea along with a small ramekin in which to place the infuser basket full of tea leaves (to prevent over-steeping): Many tea rooms don't do this, so it was a very nice touch. (Sadly, the water provided for our tea was under-heated, and we were not provided with either tea lights or cozies to keep our teapots warm.) The food arrived on traditional three-tiered tea trays, with sandwiches, scones, and sweets in descending order and plates with small amounts of jam and clotted cream were also placed on the table.

It was at this point that I started to have some real problems with this afternoon tea.

Now it is true that many restaurants, in an attempt to offer customers "good value", will present diners with single meals that  equal more than a day's recommended calorie intake. These restaurants assume a "quantity over quality" policy in the kitchen, turning out indifferent meals that mesmerize patrons with their mediocre abundance. I do not approve of such culinary shenanigans, and certainly believe that smaller portions of well-prepared food, appropriately priced, is a welcome antidote to a "super-sized" food culture.

The trouble with Chalkboard's food offerings isn't so much that the portions are small (which they are), but that they are ill-proportioned: The sandwiches are very tiny, whereas the sweets, which includes the heavy, sweet, and sticky "chocolate chip cookie dough egg-roll",  are larger and not well-matched to tea. The (single) fruit scone that each of us received was also sweet. The result is an afternoon tea that is very heavy on sweets with little "savory" to speak of.

(Since most of us were eating this meal as our lunch, this sweet-overkill also meant that we ended up being hungry and uncomfortably sugar-shocked at the same time.)

Even more distressing, however, was that once our orders were taken, we were virtually ignored by the waitstaff. (In fairness, there were only two servers on the floor, and they had our table plus a very large shower to serve.) Our service was slow, and we had a great deal of difficulty getting additional hot water: (We shouldn't have had to ask for it to begin with, and several of us had to ask more than once.) The result is that some folks didn't get a second infusion of tea until it was almost time to leave.

Cost: The basic tea service is $19 per person and includes a pot of tea, three finger sandwiches, a scone, clotted cream and jam, and three tiny desserts/sweets per person, garnished with fresh berries. Ala carte service is available, as are tea "upgrades" and champagne/sparkling wine. For those who don't drink tea, espresso and cappuccino are also available.

The Good: Chalkboard's staff was terrific about late arrivals. The tea selection is very good, and proper teaware is used in the preparation and service of the teas. Incredibly good scones.

The Bad: Difficult to get attention from waitstaff, and their failure to promptly offer more hot water was inexcusible. Tea service is too heavy on sweets. Expensive for what you get.