Gilded Rose Manor: The Little Girls Understand
My four-year-old daughter was struggling to comprehend the garish lavender and green building in front of us.
“It’s a tea party place,” I explained, as we walked up the entryway, its banisters still wrapped in Christmas-season garlands on a March afternoon.
“Does somebody live here?” my daughter asked, still trying to make sense of it all. “It looks like a house!”
The fact that Gilded Rose Manor clearly was a house, with few changes to its architecture, is a big part of its charm, and the former residence turned girly haven on Devonshire Street just west of Balboa is all about charm, of an achingly earnest sort.
Gilded Rose is a temple to tea, not as beverage, but as fetish object steeped in mythology. This fictitious rendering of a Victorian England populated entirely by ladies in flouncy hats and feather boas, I imagine, would leave authentic Brits scratching their heads in wonder and amusement at silly Yank ideas about the proper way to drink tea: only on special occasions, only in special attire (which is provided on a hat rack at the door for patrons who want to play dress-up).
But if you were looking for authentic elegance, you would have taken your tea at the Biltmore or at the Langham Huntington. We all know why we’re here at the Gilded Rose: to revisit the little-girl fantasy of the fancy lady, all grown up, sipping tea from a china cup, nibbling teensy petit fours blanketed in pastel frosting, with pinkies skyward. Here, in the “Victorian splendor” of the painfully pink tea room, it’s all about the faux-elegance, complete with crocheted doilies and mommy’s pearls.
But the ladies of the Gilded Rose know that you’re not here in search of a bargain; you’re here for a bridesmaid’s tea, or a five-year-old’s birthday party, or for a Red Hat Society luncheon. They’ve got you where they want you, and it’s tough to put up much of a fight when you’re wearing opera-length gloves and heels.
Nice article.
ReplyDeleteThey closed on June 6th. Too bad, it sounded like a fun place to take my daughter.
ReplyDeleteI do so very much miss the Royal Tea at the Gilded Rose Manor. A quiet little corner with my favorite bedtime, talking, drinking tea and nothing on finger sandwiches, scones, savory bites and petite fours. So sad it's gone.
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