LAVENDER N' LACE TEAROOM
08/13/2009 - By Trent Rowe Cindy Skop/ The Ledger 2009
Lavender and Lace Tea Room dessert tray.
When something is really fine, there's no reason to change it.
A visit to Lavender N' Lace in Lake Alfred today is just as fine and tasty as it was when Sara Bajwa opened here in 1991 and when last reviewed in 2005.
Her husband Hafeez and son Taimoor were running the show on our latest visit because Sara and a daughter were out of the country. No matter, the men did a fine job.
The restaurant is a tea room. It was designed as a tea room and has everything you could dream of to be a perfect tea room - servers wear frilly aprons (except husband and son), there's a garden and patio with frilly tables and lights, a pond with frilly finned fish, a store that sells frilly things, and frilly flowers in tea cups on the tables. And lavender and lace.
No matter how busy it is, you don't feel crowded because dining is in many small rooms and on a porch.
Specials augment the menu that includes dishes with touches of exotic spices contrasting with British Cottage Pie and French Beef Burgundy. Today's were roasted, seared lamb shank meat for $12.95, and wild salmon in a stir fry, also $12.95.
It's wise to see the dessert tray before you order. You might opt for a lighter main course. Or none at all.
Everyone gets tiny muffins that are more savory than sweet.
We started with Cream of Asparagus soup, almost light chowder with pieces of potato and tiny slices of asparagus. ($3.25 a cup, $4.50 a bowl).
Red bean and beef soup included cauliflower and flavors that could stand up and salute. Bread would be nice but the substantial soup could spoil a light appetite.
Hafeez offered a bowl of his lentil soup, a broth with lentils, split mung dal and vegetables. Flavors of turmeric, cumin, cardamom and cinnamon blended but could be tasted individually in the soup.
Order Curry Chicken mild or hot ($10.95). The complex sauce could make the Basmati rice a main course, and it made buttery chicken tenderloins special.
Stir-fried vegetables with the salmon included tomato, more East Indian than Oriental, and just-cooked salmon, not as red as I expected, but delicious.
The lamb dish, with a hint of Indian spices, could have been simpler. Hot and cold sauces contrasted nicely, the hot one with a lamb-stock base, and the cold one herby. The meat had been seared on a flat top grill after coming off the bone. Roasted potatoes and salad came with the meat. Just about everything gets a dollop of corn-peas and onion relish.
This was a case of less is better - so much going on gets confusing.
Lacking cucumber and watercress sandwiches, shrimp salad in a pita sounded properly frilly for a tea room ($9.95).
Eat some of the subtle shrimp salad before you try to pick up the pita. Lettuce lined one side of the pocket and tomato the other with shrimp overflowing in the middle. Like just about everything, fresh fruit garnished the plate.
We didn't get to try many things that I wanted to taste and write about - crepes, quiche, cottage pie, beef burgundy, chicken salad - but there are only so many holes in a belt.
We did get to try five desserts. Each costs $4.50. Get one per person and pass them around to see who oohs and ahhs the most.
Apple cake, peanut butter pie, French silk pie on a meringue crust, Angel pie, and Hummingbird cake all vied for title of favorite. It was a five-way tie.
A few things they can do to improve are:
Offer bread with the substantial soups.
Cut the core from the pineapple before slicing.
Chop the nuts smaller for the meringue shell of the French silk pie.
The only infraction in the latest inspection, June 15, was a cloth under strawberries in a cooler.
The restaurant is a special place. It always has been. Lavender N' Lace last earned four stars in 2005. It keeps the same four stars today.
Trent Rowe can be reached at 802-7512 or trent.rowe@theledger.com. Check his food blog at aquickbite.theledger.com
