Good Taste: The Post Room pours an exciting afternoon tea

Good Taste helps you eat well in the Bay Area. This week, we are raising pinkies at The Post Room’s splendid Saturday afternoon tea service.

The Beacon Grand (450 Powell Street, SF) opened in June 2022 at the hotel property formerly known as the Sir Francis Drake, which operated from 1928 to 2020. There’s a refreshed new incarnation of Starlite on the top floor, and a new lounge called The Post Room, which offers a Saturday afternoon tea service from 2-4pm. After seeing the fetching menu, I asked the publicity firm representing the hotel if I could try it for this column.

It was a good decision to be that forward. The menu is as wonderful in-person as it is on paper, but it’s the friendly, informative service, and elegant touches that aren’t experienced until you’re sitting there that helped to make The Post Room’s afternoon tea service one of the most special I’ve ever experienced in the city. 

Service begins with a chocolate-covered strawberry and glass of Guinigi brut or rosé. Since I went with a fellow teetotaler, we toasted with the strawberries.

The Post Room offers a tea selection from the luxury brand J’Enway, which you get to see, sniff, and learn about before selecting. I chose a Japanese sencha, which has a relatively low amount of caffeine compared to what I would have ordered had it been earlier in the day: a fragrant “Black Bacon” Assam black tea with flavors of maple, salt, and apple smoked wood. A trio of tea timers arrive at the table with the teapots, so you can control how light or heavy you steep.

A three-tiered tea tower came to the table next. If you want to start with dessert, it’s right on top and was composed of coconut pandan rice cakes, cassava cake, and macarons with buttercream or jam on our visit. The middle tier had three kinds of sweet and savory scones (ube, mixed berries, tomato mozzarella) offered with honey butter, fruit compote, and vanilla Chantilly cream.

The lower tier featured the biggest tea sandwiches I’ve seen at a service: New York strip steak with horseradish aioli and arugula on white bread; prosciutto, K&J Orchard figs, goat cheese, and pistachio on brioche; quiche with heirloom tomato, feta, and baby spinach; and the superstar, a Maine lobster with brown butter and Meyer lemon on a house-made sweet roll.

Every detail on the tower was flawless, but it was the size and substance of those sandwiches that make this worth the $105 price tag. There are a number of afternoon tea services in San Francisco that cost as much or more and serve sandwiches a quarter of the size. And certainly, the majesty of the Post Room’s historic architecture is worthy of your special occasions.

Tamara publishes the California Eating website, newsletter, and zine, and has just launched the Food Book Club.