The Mad Hatter, I'm torn. I wanted so badly to love this restaurant and the experience, but unfortunately didn't live up to the expectation and hype that I thought.
I took my mom here for a special mother/daughter day, to cheer her up as she's going through chemotherapy for her cancer. My mom is British, born and raised in Wales and came here following marriage at age 23. With that said, we love our high tea and have had many lovely experiences enjoying that together (mostly in the UK). However, I found out about The Mad Hatter from a friend and thought it would be fun for us to do an afternoon high tea session. Here's my thoughts on the entire experience:
* Distance: It was about an 1.25 hour long drive for us. If you don't live remotely close, I wouldn't encourage the drive as the experience wasn't worth it. Took longer to drive there than it did to entertain the entire experience.
* Service: Upon arrival we were seated and staff was friendly. Our waitress asked what brought us in, which I thought was interesting since I had to schedule/ book this afternoon high tea several weeks in advance. Once I explained the visit she offered drink options (variety of teas or coffee). The selection of teas was nice, they were out of 3 choices (which so happened to be the most popular choices) but no price deduction was offered for them being out of those despite reservations made for this specific experience. When you select a flavor tea, that is the flavor tea for the table and you cannot order a different tea flavor (or multiple tea flavors) until that has been completed. So choose wisely, and remember flavor has to be a mutual agreement amongst all at the table.
* Food/Presentation: I did request gluten free for my mother, which only one of the sandwiches was gluten free bread. They did apologize that they weren't able to fully accommodate. I found the amount of food even for two people to be quiet small/shallow compared to what you get at afternoon high tea in the UK. I appreciated the presentation, it looked very nice, but what I didn't appreciate (and would never happen in the UK) is having all that white empty space on the tiers. The food was extremely limited and the menu seemed to make it out like there would be a lot of selection and variety. Not so. Although afternoon high tea is not a full on lunch, this wasn't even a snack. Rather upsetting to find out that once you've exhausted the items on the tiers that is it - there's no refill, etc.
*** After I compared our tiers to the menu I found we were missing several items - a sandwich and dessert. I commented to the waitress when she came back around and confirmed that the kitchen forgot to plate those items for us. We had already finished all tiers and at this point were quiet upset with the experience so far. They provided an apology but didn't offer to plate those missing items - no deduction in price occurred either for this mistake.
Price: Keeping this short and sweet - too overpriced for the quality and quantity of food provided. Waitresses weren't accommodating, they were hard to track down and didn't check in on how things were from our experience.
Environment: the environment is quaint and lovely. I like the look and feel of what they did to restore this home into a restaurant. We appreciated the history throughout the building and the fun bathrooms. The downside is that it is a historic home and with age comes things like cold and drafty rooms. Where we were seated it was very cold and draft. I had to keep my jacket on as did my mother. Our teas didn't stay warm for long either. They tried to add some warmth to the environment with a plug in flame fireplace, just for looks as it didn't omit any heat. I would encourage sealing of the windows and adding a space heater or temperature controlled electric fireplace to warm up the space.
All in all, I would give The Mad Hatter a 6/10. My hope is this was just a bad day for the restaurant and it's not normally like this. With all of the unfortunate events that happened throughout our experience I wouldn't ever visit again, nor would my British mother. Too overpriced per person, especially for the quality and quantity of food, and the lack of present staff and distance traveled was icing on the cake. read more