Sunday, July 17, 2016

Fancy Lolita Tea Time - Butter Avenue

July's lolita meet up took place at Butter Avenue's Lawrence location. I booked about two weeks in advance for the reservation through their website. The booking slots for afternoon tea go as far as two weeks in advance. Even if you call to ask if you can book for a later date, they still ask you to wait for the date to appear and book through the site. 

Picture credit: Butter Avenue
Butter Avenue always provides great service and they promptly respond to any inquiries within a day if you e-mail them. I found that the online bookings were a bit more of a hassle since I had to pre-pay in advance for our group. Any cancellations 24 hours before the date are non-refundable, so I let my group know that if anything changed, to please let me know...or else they would still be on the liable for paying me back. 

We opted to choose the 12pm time slot and this month's meet was a smaller one since not everyone could make it. I was still rather excited to try the afternoon tea here, I had seen pictures and it looked so lovely!

Disclaimer: I have to apologize for the pictures, my phone wasn't cooperating with the lighting >_<;; 
Top of the tealist is Houjicha, Genmaicha and Afternoon Picnic
The tea list is short but I think it's still a decent selection. They give you the option to have your teas hot or iced, which was really nice! I had the Marvellous Moon as an iced tea and it was really refreshing. Everyone had their own little tea pots and excellent presentation of the teas before the hot water was added. To sweeten your teas, Butter provides these cute potion bottles of liquid sugar. I thought it was really cute... even though I opted not to add any sugar to my tea.

My Marvellous Moon tea with fresh strawberry and orange slices and the fancy potion sugar bottle!

They served us our quiches first and this time it was quail egg and smoked ham. It seems every week the sweet and savory options for the tea sets change, my friend Kimi said that it was different from last time she came to Butter for afternoon tea. We were also served an non-alcoholic aperitif that consisted of rose infused lychee jelly and some crumble on the bottom of it. It resembled a fruit parfait without any fruit. They replaced my crumble, since it had chocolate in it, with more lychee jelly. Which was still very delicious!

 Delicious quiche and rose-lychee aperitif.

We were asked which macarons we would like to come with our afternoon tea sets, and they even marked down with macarons didn't have chocolate in them for me. Afterwards we were served our mini brioche buns and our 2-tier stands of sweet and savory items. The brioche buns were served with apricot jam and butter was optional. I loved the savory items, and honestly, I forgot what the french pastry on the stand was called, but it tasted amazing. It was crispy and flaky but very nice cheesy and buttery flavor to it. I wish they had more on the stand!

Photos courtesy from Kimi 

My different desserts on my own 2-tier stand~!

The only difference between my non-chocolate tier and the other ones was that I received 2 mini madeleines glazed with matcha and a mini lemon meringue tart. These items replaced the mini Ciao Bella coconut dessert and the chocolate cubes which were very sweet according to Kimi. They also swapped out the chantilly cream on the mini cassis puff dessert and used an icing glaze instead to secure the blueberry.

Overall, I had an enjoyable experience at Butter Avenue. I usually like going there to get some desserts occasionally, and if you're looking to try a sampler of some of their usual desserts, afternoon tea is a nice option without filling up on the full size ones. The mini versions of the sweets are adorable and visually very appealing. They also gave us a to-go item to take home after we were done eating, a cruffin! I don't have a picture, but the croissant muffin was quite delicious!

Photo: Kimi
Any food that you don't finish you can take home and each of us had something to take away with us. The pricing is reasonable, more towards the expensive spectrum for afternoon tea. It was $50, and when you book your reservation online, they include taxes and gratuity. Expect to spend around two hours during your seating if all the spaces are booked up. They serve each table or group as all the party members arrive. Our group was the last to be assembled and thus, we were the last table to start our afternoon tea.

Photos: Kimi

Unfortunately, we didn't get a proper group photos of ourselves! Amy and Kimi had a cute cat theme with their outfits and Sarcasm-hime's dress was so cute. She made it herself! For this month's meet I wore the pink JSK of Metamorphose's Fancy Egg.

Until next time!
Stay fancy~