There are so many lovely bakeries and restaurants in Vancouver, but for her birthday, I wanted to take my mom for high tea and I had the kids in tow. I was surprised at how many places offer a high tea with kids: the Fairmont Vancouver Hotel has an intriguing sounding Bubble Gum tea, and the Secret Garden tea company ( a place I’ve visited and LOVED without kids) also has a lovely sounding tea service for kids too! My mom tends to like savory a little more than sweet so I really liked the idea of the West Coast Tea at the Urban Tea Merchant in Vancouver and I was pleased to see that they have a children’s tea service too.
The spread for our West Coast tea was phenomenal-it came on a large platter that almost took up the whole table. I don’t think I’ve ever been to another tea like it and I’m so glad my mom liked it too. My favorite tea is always some sort of Earl Grey and I had a really lovely Earl Grey tea here. (I recognized the TWG brand from our trips to Singapore and I really love their packaging and colorful containers.)
Some of the items in the children’s tea were a little complex for my guys palate: they weren’t that fond of the curried egg salad or the starfruit. But they knew this was a fancy event and they wanted to try everything and I think even though they didn’t like everything they felt proud that they had tea with us and that made the experience totally worthwhile. (Apparently they want to come back too.) The chocolate tea they had in fancy cups was definitely a hit and they decimated the chocolate strawberry. (When we go again, I need to remember to bring wet wipes to get rid of the chocolate-y evidence on their faces.)
And when we finished and even though we were completely stuffed from our tea, I realized we were too near another one of our favorite bakeries/patisseries to NOT stop by. I will not disclose if we bought or consumed any of the amazing earl grey or cassis macarons that were in the pastry case at Thierry that day but since you can never have too much cake at a celebration, we finally had an excuse to try their passion fruit mousse cake, and you know how much I’ve been in love with Lillikoi lately .
This was definitely a deliciously fabulous day and I’m so glad we were able to hang out with my mom on her birthday and it was nice to find a great place for high tea with kids in Vancouver too!
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)