The Windsor House Tea Room and Bakery in Lafayette, New Jersey, United States, is open from Thursday to Sunday. Afternoon Tea, advertized as “an authentic British tea session (with a few American twists!)”, is served in the tea room on Thursdays at 1 PM; Fridays and Saturdays at 11 AM, 1 PM, and 3 PM; and Sundays at 11 AM and 1 PM. The Windsor House does require reservations.
My husband was able to make a reservation on Thursday for Sunday at 1 PM. He was allowed to choose 11 AM or 1 PM. He notified the Windsor House of my allergies beforehand, and I ran into no issues with those allergies while there.
The building has its own parking lot behind the building. If in the parking lot and looking at the back of the building, you are meant to walk to the left, pass through a white gate, and follow a pretty little path to the front door. We were 4 minutes late for our 1 PM reservation on a Sunday, and they amiably greeted us and kindly made no mention of our tardiness.
The tea room is simple and attractive. My husband said he would describe the decorating sense as almost colonial. The rose-napkin is a little touch that really completes the table setting!
We ordered the Windsor Tea for Two, which was US$65 in 2024. We add 6.625% sales tax because we are in New Jersey (US$4.31) and tip because we are in the United States. The receipt has pre-calculated 15%, 20%, and 25% tips to choose from. There is a note about a 2.6% processing fee if using a credit card, but they either forgot to charge that or maybe we got a break because of it being our anniversary. (Speaking of which, of the two other parties present, the smaller group was celebrating Grandma’s Birthday and the large group was having a baby shower. The Windsor House seems to be popular for celebrating things!)
Our tea selections were the Buckingham Palace Garden Party and the London Strawberry. They were helpfully served in teapots with visually distinct patterns and shapes to help not confuse them. The Windsor House uses a large tea pot and a lot of tea leaves (It visually looked like at least 2 tablespoons if the sachet is round. I did not pick up the sachet to see whether it was round or flat.). The tea sachet and its string in the pot such that one would have to fish the sachet out with a fork or let the tea continue to steep. In summary, the resulting end flavor was annoyingly heavy later on and then bitter. Other than that, the flavor was fine. The tea leaf quality is at the minimum I would expect.
Tea is a matter of preference. The Winsdor House is at least vaguely aware of steep time because they have hourglass tea timers on the tables. Leaving tea leaves to steep past its completion time makes the tea gradually more bitter and more caffeinated. Relevant to that fact is that I do not add milk or sugar to my tea. (Even if I had, they do not offer milk when ordering or simply serve milk with the tea.) I would have found leaving the enormous tea sachet in the pot acceptable had the string been left out so that I could lift the sachet and keep it from continuing to steep. In the absence of that, I also could have found prompt refilling of the teapots when empty acceptable (because that helps dilute the tea), which leads me to the next point:
Like at almost every afternoon tea I have had in a tea room in North America, the Windsor House Tea Room had rather poor service as far as refilling my teapot. The server repeatedly walked past my teapot, which I had set by the edge of the table with the lid askew to indicate I needed more hot water. After a little under 15 minutes, we started trying to flag down the server. We failed multiple times before succeeding, but she did promptly remedy the hot water issue upon being notified. I probably had a refill between 20 and 25 minutes after it was needed.
When the server brought out our three-tiered meal, she explained what everything was:
The sandwiches were egg, curry chicken, cheese and tomato, and there was a slice of bread with cucumber on cream cheese. Every bite was “good”, even if the flavor was not my personal preference. The bread was varied, none was stale, and all had a nice texture. They made sure not to let the completed items sit too long before serving, which is what I think normally leads to damp bread. It was superior to the sandwiches at afternoon teas that serve what appears to be slightly damp rectangles of basic supermarket white bread with some salmon laid across. Since each item on this tier required multiple bites, my plate got wet from the juicy tomato slice. The server promptly gave me a new plate after I requested either a new plate or something to dry my dirtied plate.
The cranberry and white chocolate scones came with little glass jars of clotted cream (which can be purchased in a larger size at ShopRite) and strawberry preserves, both imported from England. The scones were so very sweet, which would have made the clotted cream unnecessary and the strawberry jam very unnecessary had the scone not been dry enough to still need something. It annoyingly felt like I was forced to add extra unneeded calories to make the scones edible. It is worth mentioning that I also happened to be eating most of the scone during the 20-something minutes while the server was not refilling my teapot.
At the top, the desserts were a blackberry-mint macaron, key lime mousse, some sort of chocolate-caramel(?) bar, and a butterfly cake with strawberry filling. The macaron’s cookie was thin but fine and the filling a bit stiff and sticky/chewy like a new piece of gum. The key lime mousse was nice overall, light and whipped and not too strong. I was too full to try the other two desserts fresh, but my husband had no complaints when he had those in the tea room. When I had the butterfly cake the next day, it tasted fine and probably tasted even better when fresh! I do associate butterfly cakes primarily with little kids, but it is a cute nostalgic treat that can be dressed up elegantly.
Overall, the food was okay. (I think it is important to note that I was pregnant when I visited. I am aware that pregnancy sometimes makes me perceive flavours differently.) You can tell that they made sure to keep to a reasonable minimum standard for the ingredients, but was my macaron slightly stale or was the filling designed to be that odd hard gummy texture? Is the “American twist” why my scone was so ridiculously sweet? This explanation actually makes a lot of sense when you consider the country this restaurant is in.
Although the tea leaf quality was fine, I disliked the tea overall. Windsor House knows about steep times and mentions milk in the menu. Why is there no simple way to lift the tea sachet to keep it from oversteeping? Why do they not offer me milk to lighten the oversteeped flavour? Why do they not pay attention to empty tea pots so that the flavour of the ever-steeping tea sachet can get diluted? While larger teapots are more authentic to a British tea, the larger teapots were intended for entertaining and sharing. Why not smaller teapots if each individual gets her/his own teapot and the leaves are going to just sit? One pot was badly over-steeped by the end simply because of the time it spent soaking. That made it an absolutely unpleasant last cuppa and, more a personal preference but also a slightly traditional consideration, much too dark and strong to complement the afternoon snacks at an afternoon tea.
The Windsor House’s advantage seems to be primarily in their pretty setting and calm atmosphere, both indoors and outdoors. I would consider returning but not because of the scones or the tea. The scone was just too sweet between the cranberries and white chocolate chips and possibly extra sugar. Regarding the tea, I am always discontent when it takes a long time for an empty teapot to be acknowledged and I do take a dim view of that quantity of tea leaves being left to steep forever. When not pregnant, I might have a different opinion of the scone but my opinion about the length of time to refill the pot and the way the tea was done is going to stay the same.
My husband agreed that the scone was overly sweet and that the clotted cream was not as nice as at Sally Lunn a few towns over in Chester (One should note that Sally Lunn claims to make their own clotted cream, so that is hard to compete with if using commercially jarred clotted cream). However, he likes the food and decor better at Windsor House than at Sally Lunn. He told me he would be willing to return to the Windsor House’s tea room.
