Yum Cha

If you love tea then this place is perfect for you. If you want coffee, go to a coffee shop 50 yards away!
You can smell all the different teas whilst you’re in the queue and admire the lovely cakes and savouries. The red chai latte and savoury scones are my favourite.
With friends we usually get a different cake or scone each and share as they’re big and rich.
The shop is nice and has lots of tables of different sizes, bright an airy upstairs and more cosy downstairs. It’s big enough that you don’t feel you’re hogging a table if you spend half hour or so escaping oxford St or the office.
I can’t help but buy a bag of their loose leaf tea most times when I go in. They’re unusual and delicious and brighten up my tea breaks at work. Mango sunrise is my favourite and their seasonal Christmassy teas are great too.

After wanting to visit for years, I finally made it here last night. I still can’t decide whether I liked it or not.
As the weather of late has been extremely dismal to say the least I was not surprised to see the place was packed, though we decided to join the queue and hedge our bets. My friend soon jumped onto a bench type table that freed up whilst I queued and queued.
I thought it was completely ridiculous that there were two people ahead of me in the queue and soon about 4 joined behind me and only one person serving. I felt really sorry for the girl, especially as her colleague was on her break and even went behind the till and serving area to put her own plate and cup in the sink and then walked off again. She didn’t stop to help out and clear the queue or anything. To give her her due, the solo girl serving kept her cool, was polite, helpful and quick and did apologise to me about the wait.
I had the Caramel Sweetheart Tea which was very nice and although she advised me not to have milk in it, I had to succumb, and along with the Banana Nutella cake my friend and I shared (which was a tad dry) each brought out the flavour in each other.
I wouldn’t say I loved Yum Cha or was bowled over by it but I didn’t hate it either though I was slightly disappointed by it and expected more.

There simply isn’t much on the menu except for tea. And the décor is trying too hard to appear effortless — ‘hobo shiek’ is probably the right term for it.
Don’t bother stopping by after 5 PM; though the place actually closes at 9 the kitchen has long since stopped churning out food. Only stale brownies and cakes await late arrivals. The prices are also a bit absurd, even for London.
In an area saturated with cafes visitors have plenty of alternatives.