Fitting to a Tea

Beverly Terfloth’s love affair with tea borders on obsession. That is precisely what makes the Vintage Tea Leaf worth a visit.

Many Southland tea rooms offer English tea, high tea and other specialty affairs centering on the legendary beverage infused from crushed leaves. At Vintage Tea Leaf, though, you will not merely be served tea, but coddled, instructed and entertained about the tea you’re drinking by the proprietress, an ebullient, professorial women who wears a teapot-shaped brooch and clearly relishes every aspect of the afternoon ritual.

The place happens to be a lunchroom, too. Many tearooms purchase the sandwiches and pastries that accompany their teas from outside, but Vintage Tea Leaf prepares all of its food items in a small back kitchen.

It’s a pretty room that I’d call frilly without being overwhelmingly feminine. The walls are blushing crimson. Tables are draped in lace or covered with flower print tablecloths. Ask about a table on the cozy mezzanine, which towers around three feet above the restaurant’s main floor. Up there, you may get the giant stuffed chair that belonged to Terfloth’s English grandmother.

Wherever you sit, you will be handed a tea list that reads like an atlas, listing almost a hundred teas from around the world. When you’ve chosen your tea, you have another choice to make. Terfloth will escort you to the area where she keeps her collection of 185 bone china cups and saucers.

Terfloth brews all her teas loose with mountain spring water in fast-heating electric kettles--to keep the water from becoming overly oxygenated, thus compromising the flavor of the tea leaves, she says. Every tea has an ideal brewing time, which she monitors by means of a timing device. When the bell rings, she removes the loose leaves with a tea sock, to prevent a tannic, over-brewed cup.

I’ve had a half-dozen teas here, all of them full-flavored and fragrant. Vintage Makaibari second flush (the first “flush” is harvested in the spring, the second in summer) is a mild, delicious Darjeeling brew. The stronger Ceylon Breakfast tea is full bodied and penetrating. I’ve also enjoyed the heavily smoked Russian Caravan tea, a fragrant spearmint tea and a tea from Maloom Estate from the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal, a tea that made my Nepal-born wife giggle with delight.

Food is a big part of the experience at Vintage Tea Leaf, so you’d better come hungry. Terfloth is proudest of her home-baked scones--bready, low-fat pastries flecked with apricots, strawberries or cranberries, depending what she has in the kitchen that day. The scones are served with homemade Devonshire-style cream and orange curd. This combination will easily sate most late afternoon hunger pangs.

I like the Vintage Tea Room salad, a Continental take on the Waldorf salad: wild rice, cranberries, pecans, leeks and water chestnuts dressed with lemon and olive oil on a bed of mesclun greens. Terfloth also makes fresh soups, such as cream of mushroom and a grainy carrot ginger, and serves them (surprise!) in little teacups.

Naturally, there are tea sandwiches--10 varieties, in fact. The best of these dainty, often sweet sandwiches are smoked salmon, cream cheese, lemon and capers on rye toast points (served open-face); smoked chicken, mayonnaise and mixed berry jam on toasted cranberry bread; and minced shrimp, ginger and leek salad on sliced croissant.

The one item that I’ve been less than happy with is Welsh rarebit. It’s cheese melted with dark beer and lemon on toast points, and I find it bland compared to the traditional version that contains a discernible jolt of mustard.

For those with a sweet tooth, Terfloth also bakes delicious bundt cakes. Her chocolate walnut cake is moist and fudgy and the zesty lemon cake lives up to its name and then some.

Afternoon teas are a filling proposition. Vintage Rose Tea, $16, brings you a large pot of premium tea, four varieties of tea sandwiches, a scone with Devonshire cream and orange curd, a slice of bundt cake and a chocolate hazelnut treat. Vintage Petit Tea, $9, includes a small pot of tea, two sandwiches and a scone with cream and curd.

Whatever you choose, you’ll probably linger to enjoy the soft classical music and the therapeutic atmosphere. If you insist, Terfloth will even make you a pot of coffee, though one senses she’d rather not.

BE THERE

Vintage Tea Leaf, 969 Broadway, Long Beach. (562) 435-5589. Thursday-Monday, 11:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday. No alcohol. All major cards. Tea for two, $32. What to Get: tea, sandwiches, scones, bundt cakes.