Sipping Tea in New York City

Lady Mendl’s Tea Salon
56 Irving Place • New York, NY 10003
ladymendlsteasalon.com • 212-460-0011

If you’re interested in a little New York City history along with a delightful afternoon-tea experience, Lady Mendl’s Tea Salon is the place to find them both. The “salon,” appropriately named as nod to the elegant, formal reception rooms popular during the Gilded Age, is housed within a Georgian brownstone in the Gramercy Park Historic District, a leafy neighborhood on Manhattan’s East Side. The area (stretching roughly between 21st and 18th Streets just east of Park Avenue South) is famous for its architecturally significant buildings and for having been a magnet for artists, actors, and the crème de la crème of 19th-century society, including William Sydney Porter (also known as O. Henry), who wrote hundreds of short stories while living here, and Elsie de Wolfe (also known as Lady Mendl), known as America’s first professional interior decorator and the woman for whom the tearoom is named.

Built in 1834, two landmark structures on the corner of 17th Street and Irving Place—the street was named for American author/diplomat Washington Irving, although he never lived here—were sympathetically transformed and reborn as the Inn at Irving Place in December 1994. The salon/tearoom was decorated in the style of Lady Mendl, who lived across the street. She was famous for converting Victorian interiors, featuring dark, heavy, ornate furnishings, into light, soft, more feminine rooms, featuring mirrors to both illuminate and expand living spaces, furniture painted in white or pale colors, chintz, chinoiserie, wicker, and trelliswork motifs, suggesting the allure of the garden. As she claimed, “I opened the doors and windows of America and let the air and sunshine in.”

The tea salon’s whimsical interior style—colorful, contemporary fabrics, mismatched china, black linens—is juxtaposed with an elegant, somewhat unconventional tea service. Rather than the traditional three courses presented formally on a tea stand, Lady Mendl’s offers a five-course prix fixe meal ($65) with each course delivered by waitstaff in chic black attire. For openers, a seasonal soup—the autumn choice was a delicious mint soup smoothed with crème fraîche and topped with toasted pumpkin seeds—arrives in traditional Moroccan tea glasses. The second course, a selection of six green-market sandwiches, arrives next and includes, among others, tasty smoked salmon with crème fraîche and wasabi caviar on pumpernickel, maple butternut squash purée with Boursin crumbles and balsamic reduction on crostini, goat cheese with fig preserves on marble rye, and puréed chickpea with red pepper garnish on 7-grain bread. Two types of scones—plain and cranberry—are served with house-made lemon curd, raspberry preserves, and clotted cream for the third course, followed by Lady Mendl’s signature fourth course, a light-as-air vanilla crêpe cake with raspberry coulis. Diners finish with a fifth course of petit fours, macarons, and chocolate covered strawberries.

Tea selections are limited to six choices—two black teas (Earl Grey and English breakfast), a toasted coconut oolong, rooibos, green mint, and lemon verbena—with sparkling wines and several enticing cocktails on offer to accompany the stylish menu.

Lady Mendl’s epitomizes a modern take on traditional afternoon tea and is often used for fashion presentations, bridal showers, small weddings, and private events for the arts. In keeping with its upscale neighborhood, no flashy signs announce either the hotel or the tearoom—only a small teacup engraved on a plaque on the building’s façade lets you know you’re in the right place.

Lady Mendl’s Tea Salon is open Thursday and Friday from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5:00 p.m. Reservations are required; children under 12 are not permitted.