Tradition fits Las Vegas to a tea

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2000 | 9:42 a.m.

While coffee is associated with the morning, tea is often thought of as an afternoon beverage. In England, though, coffee has gained in popularity, tea still borders on a national obsession. In Asian countries, it remains, by leaps and bounds, the beverage of choice at all times of day.

Las Vegas has many places in which to enjoy properly brewed tea. One is a tearoom that specializes in light meals, another is a hotel serving a fashionable English afternoon tea and a third is a Chinese tea room that features a huge menu of loose leaf teas, brick teas (compressed tea) and Chinese snacks.

Antique Cafe and Tea Room

6115 W. Tropicana Ave.

This address, in addition to being one of the most British in town, is one of our many hidden surprises. The cafe is run by two charming women from England, Kathleen Jones and Caroline Guagliano. Kathleen is the cook and baker -- making scones, tea sandwiches and doing almost everything from scratch. Caroline is the front person and business manager.

Kathleen even sings for customers. Using her training as a musical comedy performer, she warbled out a version of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," from "My Fair Lady," on a quiet afternoon last week. She did this after she finished serving one of the cafe's specialties, the Wimbledon Tennis Tea.

This is a comfy little room filled with sofas, Tiffany lamps and tables draped in home woven cloth. The wall art is for sale, and a Chickering

grand piano sits majestically in one corner of the room. Cocktail piano music tinkles in the background at all times, but until the ladies find a pianist, the music is on tape.

You'll choose from a selection of premium teas, ones like the dark, strong Assam, or a light, refreshing Green tea. The Wimbledon Tennis Tea is a bargain at $12.95. First you'll get a freshly brewed pot, covered by a tea cozy, which concentrates the heat and keeps the tea piping hot.

Then comes a two-tiered silver serving plate stocked with a quartet of tea sandwiches, egg salad with watercress, salmon and cucumber, smoked turkey and tuna, two freshly baked scones, cherry walnut and cinnamon raisin, and a variety of petit fours. Little dishes of specially blended cream and strawberry preserves are served on the side.

Kathleen also makes a wonderful Eccles cake, a mincemeat filled puff pastry that is a specialty in the north of England, and an even better Cornish pasty, using turkey instead of beef. Kathleen eschews red meat. "Watchin' my figure, darlin'," she says in her lilting Staffordshire accent.

The Verandah at the Four Seasons

3960 Las Vegas Blvd. S.

This beautiful, elegant room, which has an abundance of French windows and potted palms, serves what they call their English Afternoon Tea from 2-5 p.m. daily. It is $19 per person, or $29 per person with a glass of Louis Roederer Premier Brut Champagne.

The champagne seems like an almost unbearable luxury in this context, because this is one of the most sumptuous teas anywhere. For that, pastry chef Jean-Luc Daul from Alsace, France, deserves much of the credit. The afternoon tea is a company-wide tradition with the Four Seasons chain, and almost all of their city hotels offer it.

Daul is a real talent. Bite into one of these flaky currant scones, which look rather like grandma's baking powder biscuits, and you'll be hooked. These are the richest, most buttery scones imaginable, and they simply beg to be smeared with the strawberry jam, imported Devonshire cream or exquisitely light lemon curd that accompany them.

The scones occupy the top tier on a wedding cake shaped, sterling silver server. On the middle tier, there are sandwiches, and on the bottom, fruit tarts, eclairs, raspberry shortcrust cookies and other goodies. Daul is responsible for all of these delights, as well as for the other pastries he rotates in and out of the service.

If you're planning to make the afternoon tea your supper, it makes good sense if you plan to take in a show, since you'll be finished with time to spare. Sandwiches include smoked salmon on pumpernickel, prosciutto with fig, sliced egg with chive and cucumber with a minted cream cheese. Among the premium loose leaf teas, Black Currant, Estate Darjeeling and Earl Grey scented with bergamot, are winning options.

Tea Planet

4335 Spring Mountain Rd.

Meanwhile, across Interstate 15 and on the other side of the world, there is this Taiwanese-style tea room, serving a wide range of hot and cold teas, milk teas, fruit teas and Chinese snacks.

If you've come to purchase tea, Ten Ren teas from Los Angeles are sold in colorful boxes, anything from Chinese Pu-Erh to pricey ginseng teas at up to $128 per pound. Take a seat at one of these polished mahogany tables and let the adventure begin. There are more than 100 items on Tea Planet's extensive menu.

Hot teas are served in traditional stone pots, and the cold drinks come in large plastic tumblers. Sweet plum tea, an iced drink, has an interesting sweet and sour flavor and two tiny licorice flavored plums at the bottom of the glass. Hot Tin-Lu is a strongly flavored red tea from mainland China.

Spicy ginger tea is hot, sweet and unbelievably intense. One of the most pleasant milk teas is almond milk tea, sweet, creamy and rich. If you fancy fresh fruit teas, try peach tea, or the more exotic starfruit tea. Teas are from $3 to $6 a cup.

In Taiwan, food inevitably follows tea, and here, there are many interesting and unusual things to eat, again with no item more than $6.

Taiwanese meatball is a delightful rice flour dumpling stuffed with a mixture of minced bamboo, mushroom and ground pork. Pickle ground pork is like a Sloppy Joe sauce made from pork and preserved radish, that you eat by spooning onto hot steamed rice. There is a delicious red bean and rice ball soup, and chewy Taiwanese sausages you eat with toothpicks.

Squid jerky, however, $3 on Tea Planet's menu, serves as a reminder that most of us do not have a Chinese palate. However, $5 plain-buttered toast, is one of the most popular items on Tea Planet's truly global menu.