At McCharles House, the Victorian Decor Suits Its Meals to a Tea

Heart-shaped scones! You get heart-shaped scones with the Victorian tea at McCharles House, a green-gabled cottage, circa 1885.

The place is almost cloyingly cute, but it manages to charm you anyway. Every room is decorated past the point of preciousness. You find doilies, lamps with tasseled shades and flowered tablecloths everywhere you look. There are hardwood floors that date from the time the house was built, ornate wallpapers, an open kitchen and lots of antique furniture. (Beware of some of those beautiful wooden tables; they are a bit low for comfortable dining if you are taller than 6 feet.) Guests sit on colorful tufted cushions atop high-backed wooden chairs, which are sharing room space with cheery Christmas boughs strung with tiny shimmering lights. You wouldn’t expect a place this cute to ignore a major holiday, would you?

All this makes a perfect setting for a Victorian tea, a meal that seems to require ornate surroundings--and excellent scones. And those heart-shaped scones are wonderful. Flaky and crumbly, they make a perfect treat on a dark, wintry afternoon--especially when smeared with clotted cream and fresh raspberry preserves. It didn’t surprise me to find that high tea is the specialty here.

First you choose from a large selection of Fortnum & Mason teas (the premium English brand name), which is strained and poured at the table. You can bet your last shilling it will be hot.

The tea service is followed by an array of little sandwiches brought out on a silver platter. (It may be the only time anybody hands you anything on a silver platter, so enjoy the feeling.) I had three varieties: turkey with cream cheese and cranberries, cucumber with sour cream, and dill and apple with clotted cream (the sandwich menu changes daily). That course is followed by a scone and a madeleine. Then there is a choice of dessert--any dessert the restaurant serves. There are apple crisps, pecan crumbles, banana cakes, bread puddings. Bring your sweet tooth, because you’ll need it--and not just for dessert.

The common thread of most of the dishes here, whether at lunch, dinner or tea, is sweetness--even in salad dressings and main courses.

At lunch, for instance, all of the salads, except the one called Vegetable Patch, seemed to contain either sugar or a sweet fruit. Paisley wild rice was a good one, with slivers of ham and golden raisins. Chicken Classic contained red kidney beans, purple onions and black olives on a bed of spinach and lettuce with shredded chicken breast. L’artichoke was really a cold risotto with scallion, bell pepper and artichoke heart; the flavors in it didn’t work for me. Vegetable Patch, the one I liked best, was a potato salad with zucchini, bell pepper, carrot and a mayonnaise-dill dressing. Pasta Pizazz was a pasta salad with fusilli and olives. The lunch menu also includes several sandwiches.

Among the dinner choices, I liked the meat loaf best because it wasn’t sweet at all. The meat seemed to have been ground from sirloin or another prime cut, and the loaf had been topped with a good salsa-like tomato puree. The other two dishes I tried were, well, unique. Pork chops Raqueles was a nicely browned chop blanketed with a raspberry puree and sliced apple, pear, and strawberry-- very sweet for a main dish. Brocade Cornish game hen contained a prune and apricot stuffing along with plenty of bay leaf and rosemary seasoning. I’ve eaten--and liked--a similar stuffing served with a loin of pork, but I didn’t like the way this stuffing tasted with poultry.

Perhaps other nights are better. The menu changes continually; dinner is served just three nights a week. What I like about having dinner here is the way the restaurant’s afternoon cuteness turns romantic in the evening; it seems to acquire the look of a charming bed-and-breakfast inn.

Since the restaurant seems to favor sugar, it’s no great surprise that the highlight of dining here is dessert. Put simply, desserts are terrific. That apple crisp is served warm, and the topping melts in your mouth. It’s even better with a spoonful of clotted cream. The house chocolate cake is rich and dark. Coconut cake is sublime, a huge slice of white genoise frosted with a butter-cream frosting full of sweet grated coconut. Other desserts are similarly inviting.

McCharles House’s prices are moderate at lunch, moderate to expensive at dinner. Victorian tea is $9.75. At lunch, salads are $6.75 to $8.25, and all five can be ordered on a sampler plate for $11.85. Complete dinners range from $15.95 to $20.95. There is a pleasant small wine list, with most wines under $20 dollars.