The tea room is dim and cozy, lit by soft glass lanterns that dot the walls, which are lined in an opulent red and gold wallpaper. The murmur of voices drifts down the marble hallway and out into the hotel lobby, where it meets and gets subsumed by the bright cacophony of comings and goings. Bellhops whirl their gold wheeled luggage carts to and fro, the elevators ding cheerily, the glass doors whoosh open and shut.
A queue forms at the front desk. An older blond woman in a tailored black wool coat and heeled black boots, her lips and nails painted a deep crimson, rifles through an oversized leather handbag while she waits. Two children race around the Christmas tree which stands at attention in the center of the lobby, its branches bowing under the weight of hundreds of gold and silver baubles.
Clad in thick white woolen tights and a green plaid dress with puffy sleeves, a white Peter Pan collar, and a wide sash, the girl is gleeful to be briefly set free from the stern eyes of her parents, who are leaning on the black marble desk and speaking to the concierge. Her blond ringlets have come loose from the two shiny barrettes affixed over her ears; her brother is sliding dangerously close to the display of a model Polar Express train in the window. His leather loafers are polished and he wears honest-to-goodness knee socks beneath a miniature suit with short pants, as if he’s stepped directly from the scene of a Buckingham Palace photo shoot.
A tuxedoed man sits at the grand piano off in the corner, his fingers flying in a blur over the keys. His repertoire is classic New York meets holiday: Frank Sinatra and Irving Berlin and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
The air inside the lobby is warm and smells of gardenias and sandalwood: a welcome contrast from the chill outside, where fat snowflakes have just begun to drift down and land in wet splotches on taxi windshields. A man stomps his boots on the plush welcome mat inside the front door, which is monogrammed with an ornate C H for the name of the hotel.
There are two ways to get to the tea room: One is this main route from the lobby down the marbled hallway. The other is through the famed jazz bar, where bored-looking socialites sip martinis and whiskey sours made with spiced plum syrup and businessmen trade investment advice over fistfuls of salted peanuts and icy sidecars. Here, the air already retains a heady, rarified quality—as if by stepping in from the street the stratosphere has shifted slightly, and a curtain falls softly behind you, capturing you inside this glittering world.
White-coated servers move smoothly around the tables, depositing silver trays with dishes of crispy cheddar wafers and homemade thick-cut potato chips and pewter bowls filled with warm spiced cashews.
She’s had a drink here twice before. Once, on a work trip with a trio of coworkers who splintered off after a team dinner at a boisterous Spanish tapas spot where they had shared far too much food: huge platters of saffron-scented paella dotted with plump pink shrimp and creamy butter beans that looked like tiny seashells. Tipsy on the signature sangria (the house specialty had been a red wine version spiked with gin, cinnamon, raspberries, and mint), they had stumbled out into the cobblestone streets of Soho and hailed a cab up to the Upper East Side, where Grant—a senior research associate who wore rimless glasses and rarely smiled or spoke until he was two drinks in, when he’d turn positively garrulous—swore they had to go people-watch the “Liza Minelli-types and eat oysters” (a combination that sounded less alluring than almost any other option to her). They ended up staying until 2 AM; at one point, she vaguely recalls seeing Grant fling his arm around a silver-haired man wearing an actual cravat as they all belted out the words to New York, New York, drinks sloshing onto the piano’s shiny top.
The second time was more staid: She met her parents, aunt, and three younger cousins for a trip to see the Rockefeller Center tree a few years ago. Her cousins had flown up from Raleigh, and were wide-eyed over the crowds and chaos. After a freezing afternoon of ice-skating (a forced activity she couldn’t help but think resembled nothing of the postcard-worthy idea of whirling about with other scarf-clad skaters; in reality you scooted onto the ice and clung to the railing to avoid being walloped by one of the hundreds of others with the same idea), they had an early dinner of moules frites at Le Bilboquet, then wandered up Madison Avenue, her aunt and mother pausing to window-shop at Givenchy and Carolina Herrera while the cousins stomped their feet impatiently and shivered in the cold, cheering up only when they walked past the confectionary wonderland of the Ladurée holiday display: all towers of pastel macarons and spun sugar clouds and shimmering fruit jellies dusted in gold powder.
Her youngest cousin Lily pressed her nose to the glass, whining and pleading to go inside, until her mother coaxed her along with the promise of iced fondant petit fours and puff-pastry wrapped sausages ahead. They’d been frigid by the time they reached the bar, staying for an hour ensconced at a large table drinking mulled wine (the adults) and fizzy grenadine-hued highballs (the kids).
Today she’s going to the tea room, not the bar, because although it’s dusky enough to feel like ten PM, it’s not yet four in the afternoon.
Only a minute after she is seated, something seems to quiver in the air: an invisible bell struck by an invisible chime. She looks up to see him standing in the doorway, shaking the snow from his olive green waxed jacket. He hasn’t seen her yet, and as he scans the room, she experiences a brief but profound sense of gladness at being the one for whom he’s looking.
He slides in beside her, bringing in the crisp cold scent of the city outside, his cheeks reddened with the cold. “This place should be in a Hemingway novel,” he says delightedly, and they start to discuss the room. High tea isn’t exactly in either of their regular repertoires of afternoon activity, and the fact that he suggested they go was pure holiday adventure. Who’s here? And why? And where will they all go next? They speculates about the older couple in the corner (married for 40 years, weekly tradition) and a trio of 20-something women dressed in deeply elegant evening gowns (dinner party tonight, Gatsby-theme) and a red-headed teenager looking sullen with his parents (bad behavior at school, forced to drink herbal tea in lieu of band practice).
He starts to tells her about the teas famously served in the hallowed, oak-paneled libraries at the more pedigreed academic institutions: the afternoon tea at Harvard’s Lowell House where tweedy-jacketed professors hold forth on Dickensian literary theory over miniature egg salad sandwiches. The Yale masters’ tea, notable for distinctive speakers (students crowd in for talks by Bob Woodward, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and even more distinctive snacks (the trays of lemon and pink peppercorn shortbread are reduced to crumbs within minutes).
A waiter bows down to pour cups of thé du Hammam green tea into two gossamer-thin bone china cups painted with cornflower blue paisley pattern.
“Notes of rose petal, green dates, and berries,” he intones as the liquid splashes into each cup. They both pick up a cup—the waiter still standing at attention—and he whispers under his breath to her, “it...tastes like tea” and she has to stifle a laugh. “The food menu,” the waiter says loftily, depositing a leather-bound book on the table and turning on his heel.
As they drink, she finds herself telling him stories too, but having nothing to do with tea: rather, about her grandparent’s summer house on Nantucket. The driveway was a long sandy stretch of road dotted on either side by scrub pine and blueberries. There’s a framed photograph of her above the guest bathroom sink at her parent’s house: Crouched down with two chubby fingers reaching for a blueberry, sneakers on her feet and a pink polka-dotted swimsuit stretched taut over her round toddler stomach.
He elicits this sort of reflection from her: Conversation that meanders from place to place, unearthing tiny gems of significance in their life—the sort that wouldn’t seem relevant to almost anyone else, but stack up to becoming the people they both are.
The banquette on which they sit is firm and cushioned in a dusty mauve velvet, making it easy to slide closer so his arm rests around the back of her waist, his fingers occasionally brushing her dark hair from where it falls just against the delicate line of her clavicle.
“What does it say about me that the more refined the setting, the more difficult it is for me to practice restraint around you?” She gives him an arch look. “Oh,” he teases. “Terrible things about your upbringing, I’m sure. But now that you point it out, I think we should prioritize the most refined settings possible. Imagine what would happen at the ballet. Or—God forbid—the opera.” He says the last part with a mock gasp and then wraps his hand around hers, opening and closing her fingers and tracing a line from her pinky to her thumb so softly she can barely tell he’s touching her.
“Dessert,” she manages to say. “We should probably eat dessert.”
Heads bent, they consult the leather menu. The list affords the best discussion (his enthusiasm for the smallest things, like debating between Devonshire scones with grapefruit rosemary curd and clotted cream or caramelized apple crumble tartlets with mascarpone custard, is one of his nicest qualities which imbues even the most ordinary moments with the kind of thrill normally reserved for one-off occasions: brunch with him is as sparkly as New Year’s Eve; grocery shopping as exhilarating as a dinner party. Even taking a run together induces the adrenaline of a black diamond ski slope run—time in close proximity to him is never, ever dull.
The food is arranged on a three-tiered tray; each bite placed just so on a miniature doily. It’s all almost too pretty to eat, but once they begin, they do with gusto, treating the sampling like a grand tasting: Each sweet gets a rating. “It’s not 1 to 10,” he says, “obviously. You have to quantify it in terms of an equivalent pleasure: a simile, if you want.”
“Very academic,” she nods. “Good idea. Excellent idea. God, you’re full of good ideas!”
He gives the pear and vanilla profiterole, swathed in dark chocolate glaze, high marks. “It’s as good as putting on pajamas warm from the dryer.”
A miniature maple cheesecake with a salted caramel graham crust is good but not as good: “Like, a shower that’s almost as hot as you want it to be, but you keep pushing the lever further to the left to try and turn up the temperature a tiny bit?” she says, with mock seriousness, and he almost sprays a shower of graham crumbs onto the table laughing.
His top choice is a small cluster of candied pistachios bound together by a pistachio olive oil cake and a sticky sesame nougat. “Like the first step onto a street covered in snow with no other footprints.”
Her’s is a hazelnut cookie, the top crackly with a dusting of powdered sugar, the inside as chewy and pliable as the edge of a well-baked brownie. It’s far from the prettiest of the tray, but absolutely the best. With her eyes closed, she takes another bite, considering. “It’s...okay, it’s hard. This is exceptional. Exquisite? I’d pick these over almost any other dessert.”
A long pause, and then she says seriously, not meeting his eyes, “I’d compare to seeing you, today, walking into this room.”
Chewy Chocolate Hazelnut Amaretti
Makes about 2 dozen cookies
2 cups (180g) finely ground hazelnuts
1 cup (198g) granulated sugar, divided
3 tablespoons (16g) cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
confectioners’ sugar, for dusting
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Combine the hazelnuts, 3/4 cup of the granulated sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. Set aside.
Using a mixer, beat the egg whites until frothy. With the mixture running, slowly stream in the remaining 1/4 cup of granulated sugar and almond extract continue to beat until medium-soft peaks form. (It should hold a peak, but should flop over when you pull the whisk out.)
Add the dry ingredients and use a spatula to mix it all together: Don’t worry too much about being gentle or folding carefully; these are chewy, dense cookies and you don’t need to be delicate as you do with something like a macaron batter.
Fill a shallow bowl with confectioners’ sugar.
Use a cookie scoop or large spoon to scoop golf-ball-sized dollops out, then roll each ball in confectioners’ sugar before placing in on the baking sheet.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the tops are crackly-looking. Remove from the oven and let cool fully.