Spot of Tea

Spot of Tea at 3210 Grace Street NW is on the Grace Street Georgetown block that has developed an unusual concentration of specialty food and drink destinations in the residential street between M Street and P Street. The British-inspired tea cafe format at this address serves Georgetown’s appetite for the afternoon tea experience, which has maintained a consistent appeal in Washington’s dining culture given the city’s historical and diplomatic connections to Britain and the British Commonwealth.

The British afternoon tea is a specific ritual with a precise structure: the tiered stand that holds the finger sandwiches on the bottom tier, the warm scones with clotted cream and jam on the middle tier, and the sweet pastries and cakes on the top tier; the pot of properly brewed loose-leaf tea from one of the major tea-producing regions; and the ceremony of the service, with the teapot, the milk jug, and the strainer that the British tea tradition requires. A properly executed afternoon tea is among the most satisfying casual meals in the European food culture, and a cafe that executes it well in Georgetown fills a specific gap in the neighborhood’s food service landscape.

The loose-leaf tea selection at a serious tea room covers the major producing regions and the major style categories: the Darjeelings from the first and second flush harvests, the Assams with their malty strength, the Ceylons with their brisk character, the green teas from China and Japan, the white teas, and the herbal infusions that the non-caffeinated option requires. The Georgetown customer who comes to Spot of Tea for the tea selection rather than the afternoon tea format finds the same quality that a London tea shop provides.

Hours run Tuesday through Sunday with extended closing on Friday and Saturday. The afternoon tea format that Spot of Tea serves is organized around the British ritual that developed in the nineteenth century as the bridge between the light mid-day lunch and the heavy evening dinner. The Anna Maria Russell tradition of the seventh Duchess of Bedford, who is credited with establishing the afternoon tea as a social institution in the 1840s, has produced the most specific and precise of all Western food rituals: the exactly tiered presentation, the proper sequence of sandwiches before scones before sweets, and the correct preparation of the tea itself. A scone served with clotted cream in the Devonshire tradition, spread first with cream and then with jam, is a different product from the same scone served with whipped cream or with jam first: the clotted cream’s fat content and texture, produced by heating unpasteurized cream and allowing the fat to rise, is specific to the English dairy tradition and not replicable with an American substitute. Spot of Tea’s commitment to the proper execution of the British afternoon tea in the Georgetown Grace Street setting gives the Georgetown customer the most accurate American expression of the format that the neighborhood’s British community and Anglophile population can find locally. Hours run Tuesday through Sunday.