Alice's Tea Cup in New York City is a magical place. Well, actually, magical places--there are three, cleverly entitled "Chapter One"...and so on.
Why so magical? Well. It is an establishment based around the idea that tea need not be relegated only to teatime. It is Alice in Wonderland-themed. They have delicious scones.
Honestly, the only thing they're missing is a bunny hopping around telling you to “eat this”. Which, I suspect, might have happened if I had stayed around a little longer.
I had the great pleasure of visiting this establishment (the Upper West Side location, down the street from my new building crush, 126 W. 73rd street, which resembles a slice of wedding cake with draguees, really it does) with my extreme cake crush Elisa Strauss (you may know her as the famous cakemaker to the stars who released the books The Confetti Cakes Cookbook
But luckily, the scones also taste good. The basic buttermilk biscuit was a drier, more biscuity sort, which definitely needed cream and preserves (don't you dare not order the preserves and cream); far more interesting was the pumpkin variety, which was lightly sweet, more moist, and had a delicate glaze on top. The scones were actually on the saltier side (a definite pro for me), so they were perfect when topped with the sweet preserves, each and every sweet and salty bite a teatime revelation.
Perhaps the loveliest thing, though, is that these scones are so clearly in their natural element, and the full experience of eating them surrounded by a sort of magical-realism world is very queenly indeed. In fact, I may or may not have found myself humming a line from the animated Disney Alice In Wonderland movie as I exited...”you can learn a lot of things from the flours...especially in the month of June...”
Final thoughts: Alice's Tea Cup makes for a golden afternoon. If you can't make it to NYC this very instant, you can at least buy their cookbook, Alice's Tea Cup: Delectable Recipes for Scones, Cakes, Sandwiches, and More from New York's Most Whimsical Tea Spot
Alice's Tea Cup, 102 west 73rd Street; online here.