I was down in Florida the week before Xmas, avoiding the least
possibility of "white" and driving a rented convertible, so the mrs. and
I decided to cruise up the coast a bit and stop by chez Flagler. (Mr.
Flagler made his money by helping to found Standard Oil, then invented
Florida; among other things, he built a railroad from Jacksonville to
Key West, and opened up Miami to human settlement, more or less.)

Their house is in Palm Beach, now open as a museum dedicated to the
excesses of the Gilded Age, and it's a modest little place where the
couple could spend six weeks a year. The entrance hall is barely more
than twice the size of my house. Anyway, in the annex, overlooking the
Intracoastal Waterway, there is a little cafe where, if you get there
before all the food is gone (they make a limited amount so it's fresh
when it gets to you), you can have what they call a Gilded Age Tea.

The setting is lovely, although the view (hotels and condos across the
water) is not what it was for the Flaglers (wilderness punctuated by the
tasteful shacks of their employees), and the china service is quite
nice. The food is excellent, an assortment of tea sandwiches, of
course, with four tiny desserts (a first-rate scone, a fig bar, a
brownie, and a marvelous single-bite cream puff). But you aren't so
interested in that. You want to know about the tea.

It is the best tea I've ever had in a restaurant. It comes in a nice,
large pot, made with properly hot water and refilled as needed. (At one
point the manager saw that we were out of tea and scurried over to put
more hot water in the pot. The waitress, observing this, came back to
our table, retrieved the pot, and added fresh leaves. She wasn't going
to let us drink dishwater on her watch. I should add that in both cases
they performed the operation not at our table, but over where they had
access to boiling water.) The tea itself is a proprietary blend from
Harney's, called Whitehall (the name of the mansion). There's no
indication of what it contains, but I would guess Keemun and Darjeeling
for starters, and I found it a nice enough afternoon tea to take a pound
home with me.

The meal was a bit steep at $18 per person, plus entrance to the museum,
but it was worth it for a vacation experience.

dmh