An ‘impossible thing to do before breakfast’: Take an adventure to Alice’s Tea Cup Café in Brooklyn

Alice’s Tea Cup, the popular Manhattan-based tea house franchise that encourages whimsy and imagination while enjoying a spot of tea, unveiled its latest ‘chapter’ in Brooklyn Heights on June 18. The new café, appropriately named Alice’s To Go, provides local Brooklynites with easy, fast countertop service.

Though physically smaller in size, it still has the aura of quirky casualness with a grown-up feel and is styled with vintage key wallpaper, larger-than-life wooden mushroom adornments and potion bottles sitting above chessboard patterns in the windows. You can sit inside to enjoy a strawberry chocolate scone (with homemade jam and cream) and iced tea before exploring the rest of Brooklyn Heights for the day. It also has a condensed menu, compared to its other locations, offering freshly baked vegan scones, cake and cookies from the private, full-working kitchen downstairs. Plus, it sells Alice’s Tea, their signature blend of Indian black tea, Japanese green tea, vanilla and rose petals.

But what makes this café different from its Manhattan locations is the new emphasis on coffee from Brooklyn Roasters. Their coffee menu currently offers espresso, macchiato, cappuccinos, lattes and more, to appeal to a wider audience.

“It’s ok to love both [coffee and tea]. We have over 140 teas at other the locations, so it felt like having really good coffee would be good,” said Haley Fox, one of the franchise’s co-owners, a week after the grand opening. “We had been wanting to get into coffee for 18 years. We never took it seriously, but [here] we are.”

GOING DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE HISTORY

She and her sister Lauren originally opened shop on East 81^st Street (between 2^nd and 3^rd Avenues), just blocks away from the famous, bronze Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park – actually signing their lease on Sept. 12, 2001.

“People thought we were insane; there was a mass exodus from New York,” Fox explained. “We were like, ‘No, it’s the perfect time because we are diehard New Yorkers, we grew up here … and we’re not going anywhere.’ If anything, we wanted to show a different side to the city that was changing, and people might have been more afraid of it. We felt it was a respite, an escape.”

The Fox sisters really loved “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll growing up, but realized the story was “more like an acid trip” as they got older as adults.

“What we all seek is the Mad Hatter Tea Party – a kooky, whimsical, upside down experience,” she added as she sat down with the RHSR at the café on a quiet afternoon. “So, we wanted to offer afternoon tea without being a hotel version of afternoon tea with classical music, dressing up, [being] pinky-up, [having] fine china without the chips on it. We wanted it to be more eclectic and whimsical, so we kept coming back to the book, the characters, the unbirthday, and Alice was our inspiration.”

Over the last 18 years, Fox has noted that customers’ uses of social media at the various locations, via tagging the locations on Instagram for example, have helped contribute to the business’s success. However, social media hasn’t been necessary over time, per say.

“I do think, as we get older but want to stay younger, there is that draw to fantasy, allowing yourself to just be yourself with your friends and feel like you’re celebrating something, even if it’s not a birthday,” she said.

SETTLING IN

Fox, who currently lives in Park Slope, says she feels happy when she comes to the corner of Hicks and Middagh Streets.

“I love this community – it’s very much like the Upper West Side,” she added. “The neighbors who come in are so kind, so supportive and have been super patient, like taking packages for us and communicating for us on our behalf [leading up to the grand opening and afterward].”

One of her favorite Alice menu items – lapsang souchong smoked chicken breast – will make its debut on the Brooklyn menu this month in sandwich-form. In the fall, Alice’s To Go will also offer soups, cold refrigerated drinks, and children’s lunch boxes (especially because it’s right across the street from PS 8 The Robert Fulton School).

For more information about Alice’s Tea Cup, visit alicesteacup.com. Alice’s To Go is located at 43 Hicks Street, conveniently located near the 2/3 subway lines (Clark Street stop) and within walking distance from the DUMBO/Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 1 NYC Ferry stop.

Top photo by DeGregorio