10932 119 St NW, Edmonton, AB T5H 3P5

Cafe Linnea is the sister restaurant of Duchess. It’s located on 119th street and 109 avenue, close to Doughnut party. I’ve been to Cafe Linnea many times, for lunch, brunch, and for dinner. It’s one of my go-to places to suggest for brunch when people ask me where to go, and also one of my favourite places to take out of town guests. The only thing that I had never experienced was their High Tea, which I opted to book for Jenn’s birthday.

Being Jenn’s birthday, I emailed a week before asking if they had candles and could either place something in one of the dessert tiers with a candle so she could blow it out, or if I could bring my own candle in to place on one of the desserts. The general manager replied and said they could definitely do something to accommodate, and to tell my server when I come.

I’ve been to a couple of High Teas in Edmonton, and it’s always a fun experience, that’s a bit slower paced so you can really enjoy the company and savour the food. It’s often a longer dining experience. Their High Tea menu changes monthly, so I’ve taken a picture here for you to see what I ate.

I will only comment on my favourite things from each tier, since there were numerous items, I don’t want the post to be too lengthy (but feel free to comment or email me if you want any specifics on anything!)

We started off with an Amuse bouche. Steamed potatoes raclette. Chessy, salty, and delicious!

Of course, my favourite tier was the bottom, savoury tier. My favourite from this tier was probably the Foie Gras and fermented cherry cracker. As seen by my photo, they had actually forgotten to bring this out with our tier. I hadn’t noticed but was going through the menu and eating things one by one and forgot. I let my server know and he brought out the missing dish right away. My second favourite was the truffled mushroom quiche. All these little bites were delicious.

Next, was the middle tier. My favourite from this dish was the Orange and Earl Grey Chouquette, along with the salted caramel pain au chocolate. Really enjoyed the orange flavour in the chouquette and the flakiness of the pain au chocolate.

Lastly, for the dessert tier, I most enjoyed the tropical rum chocolate truffle. I’ve had the full version of the tarte Montreal at Duchess and really enjoyed it, but the smaller version on the small cookie was not nearly as good as the tarte.

Overall, we had an okay experience at High Tea. I thought that all of the food was good and high quality, but we had some very spotty service. Firstly, our server did not bring us sugar or milk to accompany our tea. We weren’t checked in on very frequently, so it was very timely to receive our milk/sugar, and our missing dish. At the end of our meal, we were too full to eat all of our dessert tier and it also took nearly 30 minutes to request for a box. Lastly, the table next to us was also celebrating a birthday, and a separate dessert was brought out for the patron. I didn’t think too much of it, but Jenn said, working in the service industry, differential treatment like this is very uncommon and left her with a sour feeling, what with it being her birthday. I still really like Cafe Linnea, and would still go/recommend it for other meals but would probably not come back for a High Tea experience. I think I would enjoy going to Duchess, and buying numerous pastries, sandwiches, etc, and building my own “High Tea” experience at home.