Tea at the Brown Hotel

On Sunday, my friends K, A and I took a tea-trip to Louisville, KY. The trip was steeped in history and flowing with good conversation.

We started the day with a visit to the Speed art museum. It was a great museum visit! My favorite part was viewing the English room. The original walls from an English manor are reassembled here. They're full of detailed mythical carvings. The original owner was a "Sergeant at Law" for Queen Elizabeth I (my favorite queen)!

After the museum tour, we headed over to the Brown Hotel, a grand hotel in the style of old opulence. The recent movie Elizabethtown used the ballroom from the Brown in one of its scenes.

The hotel used whole-leaf tea sachets, which I appreciate as a nice step above tea bags. It's an easy way for the hotel staff to avoid brewing in the kitchen and provide higher-quality tea. On the down side, it does leave you with the problem of what to do with the paper and tea sachets.

Our menu included:

Tarragon chicken salad with radish sprouts, smoked salmon and yogurt raita on pumpernickel and sun-dried tomato pesto with cucumber and eggplant spread.

We had Corinth raisin scones and, for dessert, a raspberry tartlet in vanilla pastry cream, a mocha chocolate ganache cup and a pistachio tartlet.

As we sat and sipped our tea, I could envision former guests like Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor and Gene Autry. They'd fit right in, and so did we! Thank you to my friends for this special day.