When you step into the triangle–shaped house at 38th and Lancaster streets for 90 well–curated minutes, the world will melt away.
Akwaaba Tea Salon is high tea with a twist, elegance made accessible. “We just wanted a place where people could come and take a breath and push back the world long enough to get in touch with themselves,” Monique Greenwood, Akwaaba’s owner, tells me. Although just a few months old, Akwaaba is already living up to its mission.
Customers are immediately met with warm strands of jazz, which most days is played live at a piano nestled by the kitchen, and led to a table, preset and adorned with a pink peony. The menu placed at each seat holds simply a list of eight teas, depicted with flowery language.
You might order the Afropunk, named for the annual Brooklyn, N.Y. festival. Its peach flavors are reminiscent of summer days, with thick honey and rooibos undertones that seem to mimic the sun’s warmth. Or you could try the Well–kanda tea, which is glowingly spoken of by the person sitting next to me, already on a second visit to Akwaaba. Well–kanda is made with the Instagram–famous butterfly pea flower, whose bright blue turns lilac with a drop of lemon juice. Try not to go crazy with the lemon juice chemical reaction like I almost did, or you might miss the sweet and delicate flavors of the tea itself.
Your tea is brought out with a steeper, but Aisha, our waitress, spends a moment carefully describing what to do, in case we’re like the majority of Akwaaba’s guests who have never done afternoon tea before. Every table is given its own tea timer to flip over, with the options for light, medium, or strong.
Once removing your steeper, you can turn your brain off and get lost in the ritual of afternoon tea—Akwaaba’s got it from there. First comes the crispy raisin scone, with a dry texture that lets a powerful lemon curd do all the flavor work. Next is a simple salad, dressed with a tangy apple cider vinegar dressing, along with a perfectly rich, creamy tomato soup.
Despite being the owner, Greenwood moves around the space as actively as our waitress, rearranging bouquets and taking time to converse with each guest. She pops by our table to explain that the soup's fresh basil garnish was grown in the wide window boxes just outside. Jennifer, Akwaaba’s pearl–adorned general manager, comes to take our plates and whispers to us to tell our friends that Akwaaba is hiring.
Finally comes the signature three–tier high tea trays. Laden with sweet and savory goodies, the tea tray highlights Akwaaba’s southern influences. Instead of finger sandwiches, think a deviled egg topped with a crispy piece of fried chicken and a hot honey drizzle—flavors that weave so seamlessly together that it’ll make you wonder why you’ve never had the pairing before. A caramelized onion and blue cheese bite, tiny enough to pop in your mouth, offers a sharp tangy burst that makes it a memorable standout on the tray.
Three tired platter from Awkabaa Tea Salon.
Melt–in–your–mouth–sweet peach cobbler, curry chicken croissants (with a harder–to–detect flavor that fades in with time), and an airy strawberry–topped vanilla cake bite are other tray highlights. Though combinations are unique, no ingredient feels as though I haven’t tried it before—which is maybe part of the magic.
Akwaaba seats two dozen and is open just Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays for three 90–minute reservation sessions. Both the small space and reservation model make it so that this is an almost intimate journey that you embark on with other guests from start to finish. On my left, a woman sits alone with her journal. She says that she didn’t get a chance to meditate this morning and thought this was the perfect place to do it.
Other guests’ voices are hushed in reverence at the onset of our meal, but by the time soups and salads are whisked away, chatter has filled up the room. On my right, sits a couple that can’t stop gushing over the food. At one point, the man takes his partner’s hand. “I’m glad you brought me here,” he smiles. “Something totally different.”
Akwaaba, which means “welcome” in the West African Twi language, began as a collection of bed–and–breakfasts opened by Greenwood in cities across the East Coast—“all the places I wanted to personally be.” She has always provided a tea experience for her B&B guests, and when a house went for sale down the street from the Philadelphia B&B location, Greenwood jumped at the chance to turn the tea tradition into a standalone experience.
The tea salon’s space used to be a residence, probably for Penn or Drexel University students living off campus, Greenwood speculates. Light streams in from wide Victorian windows to illuminate the black–and–white photographs adorning the walls, depicting smiling Black Americans dressed in their finest fur coats and flower–adorned hats. Some of the pictures, like one of six women that adorns a wall mural–style, come straight from Greenwood’s family photo album.
One can still peer around into the doorway of the kitchen at the controlled flurry going on inside, where staff chat and laugh together. Every member of the staff at Akwaaba is a woman of color and at one point I’m reminded of my aunties and my family reunions. For the rest of the meal, I feel transported back home.
I’m sighing over a lemon tart when Jennifer asks if I’d like a box. The 90 minutes are almost up, she explains, and Akwaaba has to prepare for the next cycle of guests coming in. Out front, met with the bustle of Powelton Village, some other guests and I take a moment to stand blinking, as though we are emerging from a dream—but it was just Sunday afternoon tea at Akwaaba.
TL;DR: Push the world away for 90 minutes of loose-leaf teas and non-traditional English finger foods at Akwaaba Tea Salon.
Location: 3811 Lancaster Ave.
Price: $$
Hours: Friday–Sunday, 11:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
