I am the only man in a room full of women. Our smiling server explains that you must put a tea strainer over your cup before you pour your tea. I listen carefully, and proceed to pour a cup full of tea and leaves. Five minutes later, I do it again. This is afternoon tea at Hicks & McCarthy (23 S Main St, Pittsford; 586-0938). This is decidedly not the place for a bumbling, 6'-tall restaurant reviewer to spend an afternoon sitting with his elbows off the table, showing off his skill (or lack thereof) in wielding cutlery and unfamiliar serving pieces.
On the other hand, everyone else in the room seems to be having a grand time. Near the window, at least a dozen ladies in red hats are having an animated discussion about something. The four women at the table next to mine, much more casually dressed but nonetheless conducting themselves with impeccable table manners, seem to be talking about plans for a wedding between bites of flaky scones slathered in jam and clotted cream. Despite the large number of people in the room - almost every table is full - the atmosphere is hushed and warm, buzzing like a hive of happy bees on a summer afternoon. Servers glide about the room with pots of warm water and three-tiered trays of scones, crustless sandwiches, and pastries. As a respite from the busy world outside the window, this could be heaven for someone who finds herself overwhelmed by work-a-day cares and longing for a bit of decorum in life.
Hicks & McCarthy has been serving afternoon tea for years in a bright and airy tea room beside the regular restaurant dining room. And largely because of the influence of its English-born manager, Paul Elkins, the restaurant has got it almost perfectly right. The table cloths are crisp, white linen, the tiny china cups and tea pots are Burleigh (a name which will mean something to you if you know anything about fine china), and all of the silver shines white in the afternoon sun. Once you choose between a small but perfectly adequate selection of teas, the only real choice left to you is whether to opt for a traditional tea or indulge in a glass of sparkling wine to wash down the dainties that will more or less magically appear on the table moments after you order them.
Taken from the bottom-most tier of the three-tiered tower of food, the scones are far and away the star of the show here. Dense but not heavy, decadently buttery and with just enough flake to qualify as both biscuits and pastry, these are a world away from the dreadful pucks that pass as scones at some local coffee shops. Broken open and slathered with clotted cream - a sort of cross between butter and cream cheese - and a bit of strawberry jam, they make a perfect accompaniment to tea, easing you across the divide from everyday life to a more rarified and dainty world.
The next tier of the three plates is less enticing: a trio of tiny sandwiches, crusts removed, and cut into quarters. The miniscule silver tongs with which you are supposed to pick up the sandwiches are laughably small to anyone with normal-sized hands, and require skill garnered from years of playing Operation to manipulate without sending a cucumber sandwich sailing across the room. The sandwiches themselves are fairly undistinguished: cucumber with cream cheese and dill on white bread, egg salad with crumbled bacon on white, and apple and cheddar on wheat. The bread tasted like it was mass-produced and came from a plastic bag with a twist tie - spongy and flavorless. The egg salad was particularly well made, though, and I can guarantee that I'll be crumbling bits of bacon into mine from now on.
Unfortunately, the pastries on the top tier were largely subpar. The crust on the fruit and lemon custard tarts tasted a bit stale and greasy, although the filling was quite good, with a nice lemon bite. My dining companion's reassurance that the Victoria sponge cake was supposed to taste the way it did, did nothing to allay my conviction that this jam-and-whipped-cream-filled sponge cake was more than a little dry. Nevertheless, the tea was good, the pot was bottomless, and it was awfully calming to spend an hour or so away from the noise and haste of the world.
If you don't want to have to keep your elbows off the table and want a vastly wider selection of tea, wander down the block to visit Arya Tea in its basement quarters at 15 S. Main Street in Pittsford (383-6380). Ask one of the helpful staff for a cup of tea, and prepare yourself for a long conversation.
On a recent visit, I asked for Earl Grey and found myself presented with five different kinds of the bergamot-flavored black tea (I also had to decide what kind of cup - Japanese or traditional - I wanted to have the tea served in). Eventually, I gave up trying to decipher the subtle differences between the teas I was offered, and simply threw myself on the mercy of my hostess, who brought me a pot of some of the best Earl Grey I've ever had. On another visit on a hot afternoon, I opted for a cup of iced black tea with citrus and my companion had a tall glass of iced green tea with tropical fruits. Both were incredibly refreshing, especially when accompanied by an assortment of chocolates made by Vosges of Chicago and Marie Belle - sold by the piece or by the pound depending on your preference and need for superlative chocolates in your life - in addition to a small selection of baked goods and drinking chocolate (the grown-up older brother of hot chocolate).
Honestly, though, at this time of year there is an even better alternative to going inside and sitting down to anything so formal as a pot of tea. At any number of places throughout the city - K.C. Tea & Noodle on Monroe Avenue, He's Noodles on Exchange Street near the Blue Cross Arena, Earthtones Coffee House in Webster, or Jasmine's Asian Fusion on Ridge Road, to name a few - you can get a plastic cup full of "bubble tea." A fad that came to the United States from Taiwan via Canada and New York City a few years back, bubble tea incorporates huge pearls of black-tea-soaked tapioca in drinks with a wide array of flavors and colors: pastel-green honeydew, pinky-red watermelon, light jade green tea, honey and coffee-colored black tea.
Served with a wide-bore straw, bubble tea is as fun to drink as it is refreshing. The jelly-like pearls of tapioca surge up the straw and pop in your mouth, providing an entirely novel texture sensation along with bursts of fruit or tea. A couple of these, shared among friends for novelty's sake if nothing else, would make a fun addition to a walk among the flowers in Highland Park before the hordes arrive for the Lilac Festival.