The Tea Shop on Los Rios in San Juan Capistrano

 The Tea Shop on Los Rios is a great spot for a meal or high tea after a visit to the historic Mission or a wander down Los Rios Street, one of the oldest streets in California.

We went for high tea and were immediately impressed by their extensive tea menu.  They have an interesting selection of black, green and other teas and accommodated our request for iced tea.  There are several options for the amount of food with tea.  We chose the mission tea, which is their complete tea without the champagne.  We started with a small salad and then were delivered our assortments of sandwiches and scones.  The scone was particularly good and served with raspberry preserves and cream.  The cream tasted like a mixture of sour cream and whipped cream.  I loved it!  They left us with a carafe of the iced tea, which was more than enough.  I had the house blend black tea and my friend had the watermelon oolong.  Very flavorful.

The tea includes a selection from their dessert menu.  We chose to take our lemon curd tart and coconut cake home for later.  

This was a wonderful tea, especially in terms of the variety of offerings and also the sensibility of portion size.  I've been to tea where I felt overburdened with soup, sandwiches, desserts, scones and more and ended up taking half of it home.  This was a completely reasonable meal and taking the desserts home was a nice treat for after dinner.

The space is lovely with a wide veranda, patio and garden used for service.