English Afternoon & High Tea Catering | Los Angeles And Orange County

Afternoon tea pulls on memory, sensation, and a bit of ceremony that makes it a fun theme for a wide variety of events. The memory does a lot of work before anyone arrives, a grandmother's table, a childhood tea party, a period drama, associations people carry without being taught. The sensation fills the table: tiered displays staged at varying heights, scones warm under linen and splitting open to steam, clotted cream in small footed bowls next to deep red strawberry jam and bright yellow lemon curd, finger sandwiches cut into neat rectangles and triangles and rounds (cucumber with dill butter, smoked salmon with crème fraîche, coronation chicken, egg salad with watercress), pastel macarons, chocolate pudding tartlets, mini cashew-crusted key lime pies, strawberry and cream bites, chocolate-covered strawberries, Victoria sponge in thin slices, tea breads on wooden boards, fresh florals in low arrangements, a selection of hot teas across the service.

An afternoon tea can pull on but doesn't need to be constrained by the three-tiered tea service you might enjoy at a tea room or a reservation at the Langham. A high tea can bring in heartier, more savory items that work for a meal. A large group can enjoy finger sandwiches and petit fours while engaged in the celebration of a bridal shower or baby sprinkle. An extended family may celebrate Mother's Day with the matriarch of the family and all the mothers of the next generation, with no need to worry about a two-hour reservation window. And if you want to dress up in all whites and have a Pimm's cup at a Henley's, or add red jackets, wigs, and Victorian dresses for an English gala, we're here for it.

An English selection

Our menu spans English options (and more) that work for a variety of events, from the classic tea-service anchors to a broader range of savory and sweet items. Finger sandwiches made the way they're supposed to be made: cucumber with dill butter on white, smoked salmon with crème fraîche on pumpernickel, coronation chicken on brioche, egg salad with watercress, open-face charcuterie, turkey and brie, crusts trimmed. Beyond the sandwich board: English sausage rolls, mini beef wellington with red wine reduction, smoked salmon blini, chilled English pea soup in cucumber-boursin canapés, peas-and-goat-cheese tarts, tomato herb tarts. On the sweet side: scones baked the morning of the event and served with Devonshire clotted cream and lemon curd made in our kitchen, Victoria sponge, tea breads, shortbread, macarons, mini tarts (lemon, chocolate pudding, cashew-crusted key lime), chocolate-covered strawberries, strawberry and cream bites, and a seasonal dessert display that rotates through the year. This is the range that lets a tea event actually hold an afternoon for forty guests, with a menu that carries people from arrival through the savory phase through scones through the sweet table.

Born in London and trained in pastry in New York, Elizabeth's love of English tea has made it one of our signatures since 2007.

The events we build for

Bridal and baby showers. The most common context, and the one where the adaptation matters most. A shower is really about the honoree spending time with the people who came for her: her mother, her future mother-in-law, her grandmother, her college friends, her coworkers. That's a multigenerational room, and the food and pace of tea hold that room together in a way a cocktail shower doesn't. We build the service so the honoree can actually move through the gathering, sit with different groups, open gifts without the food timing interrupting her. The food carries the event. It doesn't demand a script.

Mother's Day lunches. Hosted Mother's Day gatherings, often a few generations at one event, sometimes tied to a family tradition. The tea framework gives the afternoon structure without turning it into a formal lunch. The warm scone course alone does real work here, the kind of food moment that guests talk about on the drive home.

Milestone birthdays. Seventieth and eightieth birthdays, anniversary lunches, honorees who've aged past the cocktail format and want their friends to actually hear each other. The seated, slower register of tea is the point. We've built these for private homes, garden venues, and for clients hosting at 440 Elm when they want the architecture as part of the afternoon.

Women's gatherings, committee meetings, philanthropic afternoons. Board teas, fundraising luncheons, sorority and alumni gatherings, book clubs marking a milestone. Tea creates a register that's warmer than a business lunch and more intentional than a coffee service, and for groups that meet in the afternoon anyway, it turns a working gathering into something that feels like an event donors and members remember.

Brand, press, and production events. Beauty press previews, fashion showroom afternoons, lifestyle publication gatherings where the editorial aesthetic of tea does real work for content capture. The visual grammar of tea, the variety of the table, the colors, the linens, the florals, the display, reads on camera and in the room at the same time, and the event photographs itself while guests enjoy the afternoon. On the production side, we've catered events tied to Bridgerton, Downton Abbey, and Little Women, a mix of cast and crew gatherings and press events depending on the production, as well as events for the British Consulate. The tea tradition is the connective tissue for all of it, and we've built versions of it for audiences who know the real thing when they see it.

Themed events at scale. When the ambition goes past a shower or a lunch, a proper Bridgerton-themed party for three hundred, a Downton-era birthday, an Anglophile fundraiser that wants the full treatment, the tea framework anchors the food and the service, but the event becomes something closer to a themed ball with tea as its spine. This is where the production work matters: we've built for the actual shows and for clients who want that same world at their own event, and the experience of doing both shapes how we build the party. We'd point you toward 440 Elm for the venue. It's our 1913 landmark ballroom in Downtown Long Beach, designed by Elmer Grey (the architect of the Beverly Hills Hotel), with 30-foot coffered ceilings and original leaded glass. The architecture does most of the thematic work before you've hung a single garland, which lets the budget go into the food, the florals, the service, and the guest experience. For events of this scale and ambition, ask us about 440 Elm as part of the conversation.

Adapting the format to the event

Every tea we build starts with the event. A forty-person shower at a private home in Hancock Park asks for a different service model than a seventy-five-person brand preview at a showroom or a hundred-person philanthropic tea in a ballroom. Some events want a seated service with food brought to tables and tea poured by attendants. Some want a generous display the room can move through, with passed sandwiches and sweets circulating. Some want a mix: seated for the scone course when the honoree gives a toast, free movement before and after. The ceremony adapts. The food doesn't change.

The conversation we have with every client starts with the goal of the event, because a gala is a different build than an office meeting, a bridal shower is a different build than a Mother's Day lunch, and a themed party for three hundred is a different build than a philanthropic afternoon for thirty. Once we know what the event actually is, we work through the things that shape what we can build for it: timeline (when guests arrive, how long the service runs, when other things are happening in the room), venue (where you're hosting and what the space allows), power (tea is a warm-food format, and the warming equipment has to be supportable), activities (whether there's a gift opening, a program, speeches, a theme to coordinate around), and the amount of table real estate available for display work, because tea is a visual format and the footprint matters. Those questions are what we'd walk through with you on a first call, and they're what let us build a tea that adds enjoyment to your event.

Three ways to build a tea event

Drop-off. You host it yourself, we deliver the food ready to go. Scones, sandwiches, sweets, and a tea setup arrive presented with clear notes, in the same quality of food and display you'd get from a staffed service. For off-site gatherings, picnic birthdays, or office teas, we also build a high tea assortment in individual packaging. Works for smaller gatherings where the host is doing the hosting.

Hosted and full service. A team on site runs the tea so you don't have to. Staff in the room keeping the food warm and replenished, refreshing the table across the service, managing the setup and breakdown. This is most of what we do: bridal showers, Mother's Day lunches, milestone birthdays, brand previews, board teas, philanthropic afternoons. The host gets to host.

Large production. The scale is bigger and the scope often is too. Themed events for two hundred or more, fundraising galas, production events, multi-area builds that coordinate food, florals, rentals, and venue logistics together. This is where we draw on our production-side work (Bridgerton, Downton Abbey, British Consulate, Little Women) and where 440 Elm often enters the conversation as the venue. Same quality of food and service, built for events where the guest list, the program, and the room ask for more.