A Storm in a Teacup at COMO The Halkin
HOW A CUP OF TEA REVEALS HISTORY
Over Afternoon Tea at London's COMO The Halkin, former diplomat Lisa Honan shares the hidden history behind Britain's favourite brew, from empire to espionage.
Lisa Honan is a certified City of London guide specialising in the history of tea in London. She is also the Tea History Tutor at the UK Tea Academy. Lisa spent over 40 years as a global diplomat and development leader for the UK Foreign Office, including in Kenya, Nepal, and St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.
“I wasn't always interested in tea,' says Lisa Honan, ‘that came later, after I left my ‘proper' job.” It's a sunny afternoon in London and Lisa is carefully perusing the Afternoon Tea menu at COMO The Halkin - a multi-course feast of treats with a healthy twist. It was while Lisa was Governor of St Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha that she became fascinated in the history of the British East India Company, a powerful trading corporation that controlled large parts of India and Asia from the 1600s to 1800s, shaping global trade. “St Helena was actually one of the East India Company's strategic stopovers for ships travelling between Britain and its trading posts and territories. I guess that's where my fascination with the British East India Company - and through that, tea - began. It's extraordinary the depth behind a simple drink. But most people have no idea.”
The light is streaming in through arched windows, falling across COMO The Halkin's Afternoon Tea menu. Lisa pauses to read it with a smile: “this looks pretty exciting - I've not seen a menu like this before.” The hotel's Afternoon Tea menu is a nutritious take on a classic afternoon tea, which includes tuna tartare layered with avocado, horseradish and caviar; a carrot cake alternative in the form of zucchini and lemon; and a strawberry ‘illusion' stuffed with cashew cream. Each dish is taken from the menu of one of COMO Hotels and Resorts properties around the world, from COMO Point Yamu in Phuket, to COMO Castello del Nero in Italy and COMO Uma Paro in Bhutan. Alongside the food is a selection of loose-leaf, single-origin teas from JING Tea, the flavours ranging from traditional Darjeeling to White Peony and Jade Sword.
Lisa reflects that tea is central to understanding London’s history, because “much more than a drink, it became a political and economic force that shaped everything from shipping routes to warfare”
Lisa describes how originally, all tea came from China. Introduced to the UK around the mid-17th century, the drink grew in popularity as a status symbol among the British upper classes. It was so rare and expensive that in the 1660s for around a pound of tea, customers would have paid in excess of £500, buying the precious leaves from ‘coffee shops' (essentially business centres and meeting places) in the City of London.
By the nineteenth-century, the craze for tea had reached gargantuan proportions - and so too did the British East India Company's interest in securing a stake in the business for themselves: “there was a great deal of subterfuge: in 1848 they sent a man called Robert Fortune to steal 20,000 tea plants from China and bring them to India. He brought them to Darjeeling. That was when tea-growing in India started.”
London is peppered with evidence of the British East India Company's tea business, including the company's former headquarters in what's now the Lloyd's of London insurance market in the heart of London's business district; the Cutty Sark, an original 19th-century tea clipper, which is preserved in Greenwich; and the oldest tea shop in London that's still operating - founded in 1706 -, which is located on The Strand. Lisa reflects that tea is central to understanding London's history, because “much more than a drink, it became a political and economic force that shaped everything from shipping routes to warfare”. She explains how, for instance, it was a rejection of the British East India Company's monopoly on tea sales that led to the pivotal 1773 Boston Tea Party in the lead-up to the American Revolution.
Lisa places an order for Japanese Silver Needle tea - a white tea that she says is having “a popularity moment”. She finds it ”aromatic, floral and very subtle”, best tasted after stewing for five minutes to open out the flavours. There's no dedicated tea museum in London, says Lisa: the best way to learn the history is to try one of her East India Company walking tours - and finish with an afternoon tea. Lisa admires how alongside its loose-leaf teas, COMO The Halkin serves food inspired by places all over the world. “It's clever because it challenges the myth-making that there's such a thing as ‘The Great British Cup of Tea': in reality every sip we drink is a story of worldwide significance.”
COMO The Halkin's tea selection is sourced from JING Tea. For more information on Lisa Honan's tea tours, or to make a reservation for Afternoon Tea at COMO The Halkin, please contact our concierge team on property.
