High Tea, Old World

I'm a coffee person. Always have been. But I spent enough time behind an espresso bar to respect the craft on the other side of the counter too, and Russian Tea Time's high tea service is the kind of thing that makes you understand why people build entire rituals around a pot of leaves and hot water.

The tea itself was good. Traditional, served in glasses rather than cups, no milk, just preserves if you want them. I drank enough of it to spend most of the train ride home doing math on how far away the next bathroom was. Worth it.

The tiered towers are the real event. Lox sandwiches that didn't skimp, crumpets with clotted cream rich enough to justify the whole trip, and a rotating cast of sweet and savory bites that turn a meal into something closer to grazing with company. If you want to go all the way, the caviar service is on the menu, and it's the kind of luxurious excess a room like this was built for.

The room does half the work. Mahogany, birch, brass samovars, a balalaika somewhere in the background — it feels less like a restaurant and more like a place that's been quietly running since before you were born, because it mostly has. Located at 77 E. Adams, a few steps from the Art Institute and Symphony Center, it pulls exactly the crowd you'd expect from that geography: a strong pre-theater, post-museum energy, plus tables of women who've clearly been coming for decades and, on the day we went, several tables of gay couples doing the same thing we were. Old world dining rooms have a way of becoming everyone's living room eventually.