The Florida Foodie
Serenity Garden Tea House & Café: A Great Place to Celebrate Mom this May
316 Vallette Way, West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
Phone 561-655-3911,
email [email protected]
By Saucy Sarah
The month of May is all about Mom. Mother’s day is a day to treat Mom to something special to thank her for all that she does, and Serenity Garden Tea House & Café is the perfect place to just that. Nestled on a quiet street on the outskirts of downtown West Palm Beach, Serenity Garden Tea House is an oasis of charm and delight. The tea house is actually a converted 1920’s cottage filled with nostalgic décor that will make you think you have time traveled back to a time where high tea was the epitome of refinement. Opened in 1998, the tea house is run by the wonderfully charming, Irish-born, Audrey Farrelly. Audrey oversees every detail of your experience at Serenity Garden, ensuring your experience is grand.
Serenity Garden offers a full lunch menu along with a dazzling array of desserts, but their claim to fame is the traditional high tea they offer daily. For those of you who have never experienced high tea, I do suggest you add it to your bucket list. High tea is not just a piece of cake and a cup of tea in the late afternoon hours before dinner. High tea is an event, an experience meant to be savored and lingered over. High tea is an art as well as an experience. The pomp and circumstance that comes with high tea is meant to be respected and enjoyed. At Serenity Garden, they take their high tea seriously so you can enjoy the whole experience. Delight in the large array of wonderful loose leaf teas you can select from. Try every small sandwich and bite-sized sweet confection they bring on a gilded multilevel caddy. Spread the fresh clotted cream on the scratch-baked scone and soak in the atmosphere of lace, china, and feathers. You will never want to leave.
Serenity Garden offers a wonderful mother’s day high tea that is highly popular. I just love taking my mother there and people watching, as we sip our Earl Grey out of thin china cups. There is a powerful feeling of celebration and honor in the air as mothers and daughters share cucumber sandwiches. Wear a fancy hat and put on your Sunday best to truly get into the mood. Reservations are highly recommended for mother’s day due to the long-standing popularity of the event.
For some reason a good cup of tea has the power to bring people together. Add a little ceremony to your Mother’s Day this year and enjoy the experience of Serenity Garden Tea House & Café.
***
In her previous life, Sarah, a Palm Beach County Native, spent ten years working in various high-end eating establishments around South Florida. She is currently a fiction thesis candidate in the MFA program at Florida International University where she also teaches creative writing and rhetoric. If that is not enough, Sarah is also the owner of Cakes by Sarah, a local custom cake shop. Sarah lives in Lake Worth with her husband and two beautiful boys. “Food, fiction, and family are my life.”