New Year’s High Tea

Anoth­er guest post from Heather at Food­ie Gems of Wellie, huz­zah!

I saw the James Cook adver­tis­ing Jan­u­ary high tea deals recent­ly which remind­ed me of the myr­i­ad of high tea options in the city. And think­ing what a good time of year Jan­u­ary is for a leisure­ly after­noon tea with good friends to con­tem­plate the year ahead (if lucky enough to still be off work!).

The options include the James Cook (pol­ished), Martha’s Pantry (charm­ing), Wellesley’s McGinnity’s (old-world glam), Finc (funky), Soi (PDF) (not yet tried, but I imag­ine a lit­tle sophis­ti­cat­ed, with love­ly har­bour views), Hip­popota­mus (arty class), Sweet­pea at Petone (Pic­tured — cute, with sen­sa­tion­al cup­cakes), and Logan Brown (a piece of Welling­ton his­to­ry).

Note that some loca­tions charge if all of your par­ty don’t turn up (so be sure to con­firm your par­tic­i­pant num­bers and book­ings 24 hours before­hand), and some can be booked at brunch or lunch time if you pre­fer not to have to fit all this deli­cious food and drink in on top of lunch or brunch.

Sweet­pea even do a bloke’s option with a ‘gen­er­ous stack of meaty treats with a cou­ple of sangers, a cheeky scone and your choice of man­ly cup­cake’!

Since many include bub­bles or cock­tail options, be sure to arrange a ride home and kick back and cel­e­brate the start of anoth­er excit­ing year.

Bon appétit.

Edi­tor’s note: it would be remiss of us not to add in our own opin­ions here! We found the ser­vice at the James Cook to be eeeeeeeeee­ex­cru­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­uu­ti­at­ing­ly slow because they bring around a tea trol­ley and do that whole thing with the urns and blah blah, but the scones were great. We love Martha’s though the tight space and the dain­ti­ness of every­thing means it’s not all that relax­ing, the space is much more breath­able at Sweet Pea, and while we haven’t had high tea at any of the oth­er places,  we have feel­ings about Finc.