The Sweet Gallery, Bloor West Village, 2312 Bloor Street West

I had a very bad tea experience today at the Sweet Gallery in Bloor West Village. It's unfortunate because I should be happy when I get together with my friends but I was hungry and cold and angry. The service was not just bad, it was terrible. I was a little bit late arriving but my friends were already seated and had ordered so maybe the woman thought I was rude and wanted me to know that she disapproved of my timing. I suppose I could have skipped yoga class, or left early (the teacher was late this morning) or taken a cab or driven instead of taking the subway. The woman was downright bitchy.

Anyway, when I sat down and she asked me what tea I wanted, she didn't even offer to bring me a menu. They didn't have darlingjee so I accepted orange pekoe. When it arrived, the tea bag was from McCullagh Coffee. That was my first indication that things were not going to go well. If you were a coffee snob, would you accept coffee that was packaged and distributed by tea wholesalers? No, I didn't think so.

Then, our tiny tray of desserts and "scones" arrived. The total after taxes was just under $40 but I don't feel that I ate $10 worth of food. Part of the problem, of course, was that I am no longer eating desserts and pastries that might contain eggs. As a general rule of thumb, I will eat up to an eigth of egg but that only works when I am at someone's home and they can tell me the ingredients they used in recipe. So I didn't eat anything on the top tray and obviously didn't eat the egg sandwiches. I ate all three of the cucumber sandwiches but they weren't very good. They consisted of a thin slice of cucumber on a slice of baguette with cream cheese and smothered with pepper. Unimpressive. The scones weren't real scones. They were basically raisin buns. We didn't get enough cream and were only given individual packages of raspberry jam. I was starving from the gym and had planned to have a sandwich (smoked salmon on a bagel is my standard egg-free brunch food) but the waitress didn't come by to check on us so I decided that I didn't need an additional reason to tip her more.

The place was busy and, if I had felt that complaining would have improved our experience, I would have done that. We did complain about getting green tea instead of mint and the waitress brought the correct tea and apologized but she totally passed the buck. She said "oh she gave you green tea?" No woman, you took the order and you brought the tea pots. Therefore, you brought the wrong tea.

I can't stress enough that I will not be returning there. Fortunately I didn't pay for lunch because my tip would have been virtually non-existent. I suppose the place was pretty but I couldn't appreciate it. The entire experience was very upsetting. I didn't realize until a few minutes ago how much it has affected my whole day. basically haven't eaten anything since then and have been cranky and exhausted all afternoon. I hope the next tea will make up for today.