The Tea Lounge

The name sets an expectation The Tea Lounge only half keeps. Tea is the centre of it — afternoon service in tiers, flights poured for tasting, a Japanese ceremony with its own sweets — but the kitchen treats tea as an ingredient as readily as a drink, and a Picky Bits tapas menu now carries the visit well past the mid-afternoon pour. On Piccadilly Street, a few steps off Richmond Row in London, it bills itself plainly as a tea lounge and tapas restaurant, and the menu earns both halves of that title.

Tea is where the original idea still shows clearest. The afternoon-tea service runs in tiers — a Traditional Afternoon Tea, an English Cream Tea, an English Garden Tea — with a Little Royal Afternoon Tea that scales the ritual down for children and vegan and gluten-free versions offered alongside. Beyond the tiers, a Tea Flight for Two and a Japanese Traditional Tea and Sweets service turn the drink into something closer to a tasting than a refill, and both draw on a loose-leaf program of more than a hundred teas. Scones arrive with fresh whipped cream and an elderberry tea-infused jam — the first sign that tea here does not stay in the pot.

The savoury side has grown the most. The Picky Bits tapas list, dated to the autumn of 2025, reads like a small-plates menu in its own right: Mini Aussie Meat Pies, Patatas Bravas, a roasted tomato and garlic confit with fresh burrata dip, Shrimps from the Barbie, and a Plant Protein Salad Bowl. Underneath it sits the everyday café trade — an Avocado Everything Bagel, a Curried Chickpea Sandwich, a Cheese and Dill Pickle Toastie, a Smoked Salmon Bagel — and a steady plant-forward presence runs through all of it, with vegan and gluten-free versions called out across the menu rather than tucked into a corner. Milkshakes, smoothies, and matcha or mochi ice cream close out the order for anyone who came for something cold.

That is the detail worth following. Tea runs through the cooking the way a signature ingredient runs through a kitchen: the elderberry jam on the scones, a roasted tea-infused chicken pate among the small plates, ceremonial matcha worked into the sweets and the ice cream, a Mango Tango tea smoothie on the cold list. The flights and the Japanese service treat tea the way a wine list treats a grape — something to compare side by side, not simply order — and the loose-leaf range gives that comparison somewhere to go. Tea here is the kitchen's working material, not its theme.

The tea-room idea dates to 2016, when the business opened on Piccadilly Street around a tea sommelier's concept and a deliberate focus on sourcing. It changed hands in 2025; by local reporting, the new ownership stretched the hours and added the tapas-and-evening direction without unwinding the afternoon-tea core that regulars came for. The setting has stayed small throughout — fewer than thirty seats, vintage English warmth eased toward something calmer, a living-room feel rather than a counter. At that scale, a visit reads as an occasion more than an errand.

All of which makes it a place to plan around rather than stumble into. The seats are limited and the afternoon-tea services fill on weekends, so a reservation through the online booking does real work — particularly for the tiered services or a two-person flight. The week is shaped to match: open Wednesday through Sunday, and late enough on Friday and Saturday for the small plates to come into their own. The order that works is to settle the tea format first — a full afternoon tea, a flight, or the Japanese service — then let the Picky Bits follow if the table wants more than scones and sandwiches. Booked that way, a few steps off Richmond Row, the two halves of the name stop competing and start reading as one place.