TWG Tea at Vancouver

First time having high tea and I was not disappointed! You’ll also see people dressed up for the occasion to take photos for their social media

Went to celebrate my mom’s birthday today. Food was delicious and such beautiful display. Great tea selection and the food was fresh. Outstanding service! My mom and I had a wonderful time!

Had afternoon tea there yesterday. The ambiance, food and service were great. The menu items were delicious. Everything on the afternoon tea menu tasted fresh and perfectly seasoned, but it was the braised pork belly that really stood out for us. Will come back again. It was one of the best high tea expetirnces I've had. Highly recommend this place.

The tea and atmosphere is decent. As an "up scale" tea shop very little is under $30 bucks. But the food could use work. Some hot dishes came out luke warm. And the staff are polite but really uptight

Loved my experience here! The atmosphere is so lovely. They have a large menu with quality teas, drinks, and food items. Their tea cups are shallow and delicate, and the teapots are both modern and classic. Sophisticated music is played and the servers are very kind. I’ve been to a couple high tea establishments in the city and this one is my favourite so far!

Encyclopedia of teas menu will baffle you but you can ask their expert staff for the recommendations. Three layered snack tray with high tea is what u aim for and get it customized if you have dietary choices. Amazing staff.

I enjoyed my visit to TWG tea today. I came here for their afternoon tea service. Remember to phone in to ask about their menu, because they've been telling everyone today that they are only offering the afternoon tea menu. So minimum spend is necessary, at least on the weekends probably.
I like coming here definitely because of the tea selection and their food is always delivered at a consistent level. (Slightly above average compared to all the other options in Vancouver.)
They do get busy, so remember to make an reservation online on Open Table before coming!

I was impressed by the list of finest teas from around the world. Love their retail areas and picked up some of the teas home. We had lunch and it was a lovely one. It was a calm and quiet lunch. Well portioned food and food was amazingly delicious. I'd love to come back for tea and have some of their wonderful desserts.

1 star for service.
0 stars for value
0 starts for food quality
0 stars for variety of products
-1 star for forcing customers to spend min 60 dollar each for one high tea per person. 3 of us paid 180 dollar for a tea and few small and not very tasty food.
Do not recommend TWG for anything other than their teas, definitely no to their high tea. Unfortunately now you can even go for just a tea!
Min one high tea per person.
Table covers has not been changed for while.

This rating is not for the store itself but for their Vancouver based head office/customer service and their online store. TWG recently had a sale and I went online to purchase my tea to limit having to go to the city especially with all the Covid cases rising I thought having it shipped would be easier. Apparently something happened while on their website and my order was somehow placed through their Singapore online shop. Not once during the order process did it show me that I was no longer ordering through the Canadian/US site. It continued to show CAD $ and the currency did not change. I was charged $15 for shipping which I thought was a bit weird considering how much I just spent but brushed it off and thought it was because of the delivery company they used or something to do with the holidays being around the corner. A few days later I received an email from the delivery company saying I owed duty fees. After looking closely it showed that my order was coming from Singapore and I owed over $30 in fees. I was quite upset and reached out to the Vancouver head office/customer service to find out what happened. The person was less than helpful and basically informed me they have 2 different sites and I ordered from the Singapore site somehow and that they were not connected and couldn’t do anything for me. I explained that at no time did it say it was anything but the Canadian/US site. The currency never changed and there was nothing notifying me otherwise and perhaps their site glitched. They didn’t care and brushed me off and actually didn’t bother responding back to me after that. So here I am waiting for my tea to arrive from Singapore, I certainly did not get a sale price on anything! I actually paid way more. I’m super upset and disappointed at how they handled this. They clearly don’t care about customer service and making things right! I’ll never spend another dime at any of their locations and will certainly never order online again. There are lots of other Tea shops go support them instead! I do not recommend TWG!

Still like the old staffs, however, I'm no longer a fan of their afternoon tea service. The quality of tea remains the same, but the food selection leaves much to be desired. I just come there for the nostalgia if anything. I liked it better when it was still Urban Tea Merchant. They had better food selection then.

A lovely tea shop filled up to the ceiling with a colourful assortment of teas from various countries. You can purchase tea either in loose leaf or in cotton tea bags. I tried their afternoon tea (reservation required) and it was an amazing experience. I choose milk oolong, and the tea was brewed properly and it had a creamy milky aroma and taste. The wagyu sliders, egg sandwiches, and the rose macaron were my favorites. Unfortunately there were no scones with clotted cream and jam, which is a classic part of afternoon tea. Menu is limited compared to a couple years ago, but it might be due to the pandemic. The afternoon tea may be pricey, but it is worth a shot.

The High Tea experience at this establishment is excellent and a must try, huge assortment of many fine teas, food is superb and presented artfully. Service is just rightA wonderful choice for a second date in a lovely intimate setting for a great location Downtown. Highly recommended

Good tea but rude staff. They reduce their menu to only the afternoon tea set. This was not posted on their website so it was a waste of time to go.

Very nice place with a large selection, informative staff, and really tasty treats. I learned more about tea in one hour than I thought possible. I highly recommend to any tea lover in the area.

I just browsed, considered purchasing some tea for a present; not the friendliest staff. Cheer's.

Loved this place. Has the most varieties of teas that I have seen. Service and the food were very good

Was here a few weeks back. Was promptly ushered to our seats. Staff is knowledgeable on the teas and recommendations and all wearing masks. Food tasted great from the tower. Tea was great. Overall experience was good. Most parking nearby is pay parking.

Just for the public to be aware, if you order tea with DHL, you'll have to pay $33.40 CAD on top for customs.

I love it here! I've been there twice now, once recently for valentines day. I loveeee the food from the afternoon tea. Theres so much selection of teas, and the servers are all super nice, helpful and attentive.

I do treasure the time with loved ones here where we can linger over cups of tea and impeccable service

Haven’t been here in a few years because the experience just hasn’t been good since it’s been renovated. Unfortunately it’s gotten even worse, service is bad, person taking our order didn’t even know the Spring Time tea set includes savoury and sweets and told me I had to pick one or the other. Also for $58 and I can’t even choose my tea? The tea that was mandatory is not even a strong blend of tea, and it is weird that they take the tea leaves out so when you add water to refill it there’s no more tea flavour. Unless you ordered a tea again. Honestly a pretty terrible experience at this price range, some of the servers are not very friendly and have a kind of stuck up attitude and are not knowledgable. The portions are small, presentation is bare minimum, the desserts are very lacking and have no variety besides just being sweet. I had to wait another 15-20 min for my set after our first tea set arrived, very unorganized. Overall I can only say do not bother wasting your money here! Such a shame as TWG used to be a great afternoon tea experience.

Reservations of 6 with some special friends on a Sunday afternoon. I arrived 15 mins early and our table was ready. The place was bustling with guests in the boutique and the tea salon was 3/4 full. The high ceiling makes the room look so bright and inviting. The boutique is bright with yellow canisters lining the wall.

I ordered the signature set and each item was so delicious made with high quality ingredients!

My friend had the Chic set which has scone but no sweet desserts. Great if you only like savoury, no sweet.

I chose the French Earl Grey tea was so perfect for Sunday afternoon.

They have so many tea luxury selection and the staff was knowledgeable. I love high tea!

The service is pretty poor. The servers were so rushed to take away my plates even though we still had some food left to eat.

Me and my gf were so excited to try this place, but we left with huge disappointments. The customer service were bad in many ways. When I was ordering a drink, the waitress kept pointing me to another drink until I told her no, I only wanted this one. After our order got taken, another waitress came and informed me that they were sold out with the drink I wanted. I was surprised. Running out of a drink was sth unheard. Then I picked another one. Again, another waitress came and told me that one was sold out too. I mean, how’s that possible? ! They are a tea shop! Then the waitress forgot abt my friend’s order, delivered to the wrong table, food and drink were overrated, etc. Seriously, we went in with a happy mood. The mocktail I ordered was overly sweet (I think they added too much sugar) and my chocolate truffle cake taste like chewing gum. Not even joking. I couldn’t finish any of the drink or my cake. Waitress never came back to check on us after food was delivered to our table. With a place like this, we were hoping to be served with a basic standard customer service and good food quality. This is really a disappointment. Both of us agreed that we will never want to come back again!

If you just want to take pic, sure. If you are a foodie or like tea, I’ll suggest don’t waste your time or money. There are plenty of places in vancouver or cafe that are better than this place.

This was my first visit to the TWG location in Vancouver. Service on the retail side was really fast and attentive, but the staff on the restaurant side seemed newer, and as a result our afternoon tea experience didn't deliver the same luxury experience of other TWG locations. Since you pay a premium to eat here, your experience should be fantastic.

That said, it was still an incredible meal. My partner called it "the most satisfying meal [he'd] ever had without feeling full to the point of being sick. " As we went on Valentine's Day, there were only two menu options. We went for the Springtime Tea set, and almost everything was perfect. The savory dishes were light and flavourful, and the sweets were incredibly well balanced and beautifully presented. I was only disappointed by the macaron, which was almost crunchy all the way through, as opposed to the crisp shell and chewy interior I expected. Since macarons are becoming more and more ubiquitous, it's quite obvious when one isn't really good.

I would definitely go again on a day when the full menu is available.

This tea shop / restaurant is so relaxing, beautiful and elegant that it had the same effect on us than a spa: minute by minute we felt more and more relaxed. I loved my meal, a very well cooked and seasoned fish. The tea I ordered with it was delicious as well. I also had their moon cake last winter; I didn't realize it would be so pricy but I'm actually glad I didn't know about the price, otherwise I wouldn't have been buying it and would have deprived myself from a succulent treat. Thumbs up for the friendly and very polite service that I experienced on both times.

A girlfriend and I recently visited for afternoon high-tea and we absolutely loved it! By far the best high tea experience I have had in Vancouver. The tea salon itself is beautiful and comfortable. We loved the range of teas they offered us and all the desserts we tried were delicious! Overall, this was a high tea experience that exceeded our expectations. Highly recommend visiting this tea salon, its the perfect place for a nice high tea in Vancouver.

I’ve been coming here annually since they opened, and I’m sad to say that the quality and service have significantly declined. I’m not sure what it’s like elsewhere in the world but I suspect it’s attributed to management at the Vancouver location. I was there a few weeks ago for my birthday and had a very disappointing experience:
- Of all the teas they have listed in their tea menu (it’s an impressive menu that looks like a book), they probably have just 10% of it actually in store. Of the 15 or so Earl Grey options, they only had the chocolate Earl Grey. Of the black teas, they had very limited selection, and the server couldn’t give us a description of what they had. If you’re unfamiliar with the menu, it’s not like other tea places that provide a description of each tea. They list tea names like “Singapore Breakfast” (my favorite one that I get every time that was unavailable) that don’t tell you the flavour profile, so you rely on the server to tell you. Each time we asked about a tea, she would hesitate, say she didn’t know, and just stand there. At our request she would very reluctantly go ask and return with one word descriptions. She could not provide any recommendations.
- I asked her to why every tea was out of stock and she shrugged and said “my manager didn’t order any”. Please remember that this is a high end place, so this type of service was very unusual and totally frustrating.
- The high tea comes with your choice of macarons, but only one flavour was available (see a theme here?) so you didn’t actually have a choice
- We spent a long time of trying to understand what tea was actually in stock to order (everything we pointed to on the menu was unavailable), and we felt so frustrated that a tea place didn’t have any tea. To add to our disappointment our server seemed totally disinterested in our experience, and made us feel like an inconvenience.
- We asked to see the manager out of desperation, and sadly he was not much better. My husband told the manager that we’ve been coming here for years, that this has been a very disappointing experience, and that we need to leave (we’ve never ever had to leave a restaurant we made reservations at and was excited to go to) and he replied “oh okay”. We left and made a last minute reservation at H Lounge (our first time), and had an amazing experience.
- Vancouver has several amazing places for tea, and I encourage you to spend your money elsewhere. If TWG keeps this up I don’t expect them to be around in Vancouver for long.

I was extremely disappointed this time. We ordered the winter set.

I told them ahead of time with dietary restriction, I cannot eat raw food. They still gave me not fully cooked quail egg. Dessert did not check rather the mousse are made with raw egg white. I was very disappointed. The food was disgusting too. Especially the foei gras, taste raw. Miso sable fish was fishy, doesn't have any miso taste at all.

Great atmosphere. Server was friendly but lack of experience.

When we had the bill, they did not deduct the price of tea from our bill. Took them 15 mins to figure out the correct bill and cannot even refund the right amount. Server has to run back and forth 3,4 times to get the bill and money.

This was my 2nd time been to this place. First time was amazing so we came back. Scones are always the best. However, this time I was very disappointed that I will not consider coming back.

I thought of skipping writing an unfavourable review after my recent dinner experience at TWG (may be they were having a bad day or something), , but when I return there to purchase some tea and macaroons, I was disappointed again so I thought, may be, it's a good idea to share my experience so the management can address the issues since it seems to be systemic.
Dinner
Any question we ask about the menu, the girl had to ask her supervisor about. The questions include: does this soup has dairy in it? Is the Nikois salad warm or cold? (the way she described the dish, had me thinking it was cold so I was confused) ; can the dessert from set menu be substituted for GF option? Do they have toothpicks? She did not know the answers to ANY of these questions! There was no music on the background although I remember they used to have classical music playing.
Purchasing teas
The next time, I cam to buy some teas and macaroons, I waited for a girl to pay attention to me standing AT THE COUNTER WITH MY VISA in my hands (obviously I knew what I wanted and was a bit in a rush). No luck! She was too involved with her potential Asian client asking about tea pots. So I walked to another counter and ask another person for help. He was very attentive and fast. As he was taking care of my teas, he asked the same girl to help with macaroons. Everything was great until I walked out if the door and decided to check the macaroons. She put THE WRONG KIND! Really? ! I had to go back to change it.
Anyway, it seems like something a bit off with the training of their personnel.

It was the first time I visit this place. We waited 20 minutes, no server came to us until we call them. Min 1 pot of tea per person. I ordered a vanilla cake, but it was actually made from cinnamon.will never visit again.

Terrible food quality.
Can always find another better place with higher food quality and good services.

The restaurant is beautiful and a quaint place to have tea on a Sunday afternoon. The location was a little hard to find and parking downtown is pretty expensive. Would recommend carpooling to save money on the transportation. They told me that they had a gluten free menu but they were only able to offer one dish that was truly gluten free. The snack options were delicious and the combination of sweets and savoury was lovely. They had a great selection of teas and the price was fair but a little on the high side compared to other places that offer afternoon tea. Service was a little slow but the overall experience was great. The server was so accommodating in taking photos of our group.

The food was very good even though the serving is small. The service is excellent. I love the loose leaf tea.

Spacious, elegant, excellent services

The manager who served us today is absolutely fantastic, very polite and knowledge!

Not only making adequate recommendations, but also being really considerate when we are ordering our afternoon tea there.

The food was decent, solid quality and reasonable. We did find the seafood dish is a bit fishy (shrug)

The tiger prawn is grilled as perfect as possible, juicy and tender, but the risotto is a bit undercook.

Any spark? Probably not the food, But the service! Applaud to the manager in suit!

We tried their set menu on Mother's Day. The offerings were pricey as expected; but the food, teas, cocktails and service exceeded our expectations! We enjoyed our time there right from the start. We're definitely coming back and try their other offerings.

I ordered their tea from their official website for ~$120 and what I got is empty tea tins, for $120. Contacted them by email and phone with no response. Settled by credit card provider. They are scams

I wish we had gone somewhere else. It was only satisfactory in a city where there are so many amazing places to eat. They were sold out of champagne and were not serving any of their cocktails, so I asked for one of their mocktails and they were missing the lychee, so I just had water since I couldn't have my first, second, or third choices of drink. Then when we tried to purchase some of the tea we had ordered and drank at our table, but they were sold out of that too. Whoever is doing their ordering is doing a terrible job. Not sure how they're staying in business. My shrimp and lobster club had very little lobster in it. At this point I'm just glad it didn't give me food poisoning.