Tea at Candella

If you’re looking for a cosy and charming place to take tea, let me introduce you to the Candella Tea Room. This family-run team room has been serving tea, cakes, sandwiches, and other delectable treats on Kensington Church Street since it opened in 2012. Candella caught my eye with its mini chandeliers, vintage interiors, and the vast array of teaware when I passed by on the bus last year.

Candella Team Room on 34 Kensington Church Street

Inside the beautiful tea room

Original 1920’s painted walls with three different chairs for each table

Grand Piano with chinaware for sale. On some evenings, there is a pianist who performs at the tea room though I did not have the pleasure of enjoying a performance during my three visits. Instead, we listened to classical music or jazz on the speakers.

Candella is the perfect place to enjoy affordable cream or afternoon tea alone or with company. The price for afternoon tea is under £16 and cream tea is around £8. The cakes are all freshly baked – one happy customer complimented the server on the scrumptious cake he baked – as well as the macarons. I tried the rose-flavoured macaron (£1.50), which had a jam filling.

Aside from the usual black and green teas offered in most tea salons, Candella also offers red, white (unoxidised; not black tea with milk), and herbal/specialty teas. Since we couldn’t decide on one, we asked the lady working during the morning (the owner/manager?) for some recommendations. She pointed out that the availability of the teas listed are often subject to change and came around with at least five tea caddies for us to smell. I liked both Thé du Hammam from Palais des Thés (Paris) and Marco Polo from Mariage Frères (Paris). Hammam, a green tea with roses, green dates, red fruit and orange flower water, is the most popular tea amongst the female customers as it is not only fruity and floral, but good for the body. Equally popular is the Marco Polo, a fruity and floral black tea with Chinese and Tibetan flowers. We went with Thé du Hammam on our first visit and Marco Polo on our second and third visit. Although we could have picked a different tea to try (I would like to try Mariage Frères’ Swan Lake one day) on our last visit, we enjoyed the fragrant Marco Polo very much. We found that it tasted best when we were on our second or third cup of tea. We ordered a single pot for £4.40 which serves at least six cups of tea (three cups for two people). I liked how each tea pot and tea cup with saucer is different, as you can see from my set of photos below.