As longtime readers may suspect, Suzi and I have not always been so occupied by traditional pursuits such as baking, historic preservation, and tea parties. At sixteen, our lives forever changed with the acquisition of the driver’s license, truly the golden ticket to the big, exciting world. For a good twenty-year span, these interests took a back seat to the lures of 1980s Santa Cruz: so very much fun to be had, so many cool places to discover, and legions of surfer boys to be chased around…
Anyway, one of the treasures that we found was a local tearoom in Capitola. Though right up the street from fabulous Gayle’s Bakery, it was in the quaint white carriage house of an old estate. The mansion house was still there, despite the large property having been divided and apartments built all around, obscuring the ornate farmhouse from view. We may have first noticed the tea house because our bestie Gina worked in the apartments surrounding the old house.
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​Thankfully, the carriage house complex remained intact, encompassing a courtyard and cute little outbuildings, which may have been the stable yard. In researching the tea house, I found information about the estate and the carriage house specifically. Originally a Mexican land grant from 1830, the Castro Averon Mansion house was built in 1877, closer to Soquel Creek, then moved uphill in 1884. The carriage house was built circa 1890 and has been a tea house or restaurant since the 1890s, an astonishing fact which blew my mind and put California tea houses into some sort of historical perspective. That sweet little building had been a tea house for well over 100 years! In the 30 plus years since Suzi and I started having tea there, it has been several different establishments: Camellia House, Bloomsbury Tea Room, and finally, The Quail and Thistle, which closed in 2015. Sadly, the tearoom sits empty these days. I do hope some nice tea lady will open it back up and restore it to its rightful use, as a wonderful little tea house. (And that person won’t be this old tea lady.)

Of course, we are not waiting around for that. Chef Jesikah Stolaroff has opened restaurant Vim on the west side of Santa Cruz and has amazingly decided to offer monthly afternoon teas. She has quite a local following for her dinner menu and opens early for afternoon tea one Sunday a month. Her teas are so beautiful and take so much work to execute, we worried if she was going to overwork herself and not continue with the tea Sundays. We were reassured to hear that the restaurant closes after tea service ends, the staff getting to skip dinner service that Sunday. The teas have become quite popular, the winter holiday themed teas filling up quickly and selling out. My friend Polly snagged reservations for the January tea and shared these photos with me to pass along to you, faithful tea readers.
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​As you can read above, the menu is creative and current but builds on afternoon tea traditions with savories, scones, and ample miniature desserts. Polly and her companions reported the entire menu delicious, with the beautiful pastries tasting every bit as good as they look. I am happy to see the 3-tiered server utilized for the savories with the pretty cucumber and beet hummus sandwiches on top; my only quibble is that the lovely little pastries are crowded on a nondescript, too-small plate. Pastries that attractive deserve to be highlighted on their own platter, hopefully made of elegant china, polished silver, or their own 2- or 3-tiered server. Taste is paramount, of course, but proper serve ware contributes to the aesthetics of afternoon tea. Part of me wants to offer her some trays from my growing collection of tea gear, but the bigger part of me says to mind my own business and let her find her own way.
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After years of decline in tearooms and afternoon tea service in the United States, I am cautiously optimistic about the uptick of tea rooms and similar establishments. Though she moved two and a half hours southwest, loyal friend of myteaplanner.com Merlina and I try to get together for hijinks and tea as often as possible. As artist Mary Engelbreit so wisely says, the road to the house of a friend is never long, (or something like that) and I firmly agree.

Happily, a new tearoom in Lincoln opened in October of last year.  The Sotherton Tea Room is in a new building, so the owner, Elaine Mueller, got to decorate and furnish the new room to her specifications. Her family spent summers in England, she grew up with the British afternoon tea tradition dear to her heart and the Sotherton is a dream fulfilled for her. Lincoln area folks are fortunate indeed to have a lovely tearoom so nearby.
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The Sotherton has been featured several times in local television press. You can see a video of a CBS visit here: Sotherton Tea Room video clip

The Sotherton Tea Room is still new and trying different things to create their customer base, a necessity in every food business. During our first visit in December, Merlina and I both liked the wintery effect of snow falling outside candle-lit windows, an image created by a large screen television on one wall of the tearoom.
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When I read they were starting a Wednesday afternoon tea service called “Tea and a Movie” which pairs the traditional afternoon tea with a classic or modern movie, I remembered the big screen. I was intrigued by the movie idea but wondered how tea and a movie would fit together: would the movie be interrupted by table service, would guests be talking through the movie, would I feel like I’d rather be chatting with Merlina than watching the movie? We chose the 1958 movie Gigi with Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier and went to tea with open minds.

I should not have worried. The staff had worked out the pace of the tea service to minimize interruptions, only stopping by our table to refill our teapots during the movie. Being a big fan of old movies, I had seen Gigi many times on Turner Classic movie channel but realized that I had never seen it on a big screen and hadn’t fully grasped how beautiful the movie would look in such a format. Merlina and I and every single other guest were completely quiet and rapt and enthralled with the splendor of the vibrant color and magic of the film. As in mega hit My Fair Lady, artist Cecil Beaton did set design and costumes, taking good scripts, great casts, and pushing the movies up to the very height of what a movie spectacle could be. We found it to be an enormous success: go, Sotherton!

A few other things the Sotherton is trying out are offering mocktails with afternoon tea service, adding brunch Friday through Sunday, adding champagne when a liquor license is approved, and having trivia nights with British style pub foods. We wish them luck with all their endeavors and will return to Sotherton for afternoon tea again.

After meeting up near Lincoln with Merlina several times now, I can recommend a trip to the quaint little downtown and surroundings. I was charmed by the local history museum, the Lincoln Area Archives Museum, which displays a blend of antique and vintage items of interest, donated by local folks whose families came for the gold rush and settled in the foothills.

In the museum, I recognized a display of terra cotta and glazed architectural elements that had fascinated me when I first saw similar ones at High Hand Nursery, in nearby Loomis. Besides being an amazing plant nursery and perfect lunch-in-the-garden place, High Hand Nursery is set among old fruit sheds, repurposed from the time when the area shipped fruit grown there in rail cars. I had a great time poking around the sheds and happened upon these cool terra cotta gargoyles, big pipes, sculptures, and curiosities that looked like they came off a 19th century building.
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It turned out that Lincoln is home to historic and still functioning 140 year old Gladding McBean, maker of  terra cotta, clay pipe, and tile products. From sewer pipes to neoclassical sculpture to Franciscan dishware, Gladding McBean has the most amazing variety of historical to modern products than can be believed. The Lincoln Area Archives Museum sells a big, beautiful coffee table book about Gladding McBean that I had to take home with me.

Clockwise from upper left:  various examples of Gladden McBean work, including a 1914 acanthus leaf capital, a decorative plaque of an RCA company’s His Masters Voice, the Hoover Tower at Stanford University (photo courtesy of Stanford,) and a colorful glazed tile.

​​I hope you have plans to go on a spring tea adventure soon. Getting out to the California coast or foothills of the Sierras is always a good idea, and running into a tearoom is a pleasant bonus; it seems there are a few more than there were before. As always, report any adventures you may have out there. Happy Spring!