Title: High Tea & Tour at the Pardee Home Museum
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

We raved about the Pardee Museum's amazing High Tea, going so far as to petition Yelp (successfully) to include them when people searched for "high tea" recommendations. Fortunately – or unfortunately, for us – several people read about Pardee and went for their own teas, making Pardee now 14 reviews strong with a solid five-star rating (a distinct improvement over the 4 reviews they had acquired over a three year prior period)! The only problem is that one of those inspired by my review was Luke Tsai, food critic for the East Bay Express. He details his own five-star teatime, and why Pardee is now booked up four months in advance for reservations! http://www.eastbayexpress.com/WhatTheFork/archives/2013/02/26/high-tea-at-the-pardee-home-a-hidden-gem

High Tea & Tour at the Pardee Home Museum 
672 11^th St., Oakland, CA
http://www.pardeehome.org/ (click on Tours/Tea for details)
Review date: August 2012

There are many historical homes in the Bay Area. But there are not many remaining in original condition (albeit the last surviving Pardee family members died not that long ago). Very few of these older homes retain the original furnishings, much less the personal possessions of the families. Filoli Mansion and Gardens in Woodside, for example, was deeded to the state with no personal possessions and less than 15% of the original furnishings. 

Unlike most historical landmark homes, the Pardee Home Museum was set up as a family trust and specifically intended to remain intact. It is in the same condition as it was on the day in 1981 when the last surviving granddaughter died at the ripe old age of 86. As a result the Pardee Home is a frozen snapshot in time of this wealthy California family, from the mid-1800's right up to 1981.

Run entirely by volunteers and a (very) small staff, the Pardee Home Museum has been open to the public since the early 1990's. It's only within the last two years they have started offering a reservation-only light tea or high tea. The food for either tea is produced by the volunteers – on their own dime, no less. The cost includes a free tour afterwards (normally $5/person). 

As some of you know, I belong to an informal "movie group" of five friends who get together periodically to exchange books and watch a movie that we've missed in the theatres (or in my case, that the younger Gen X'ers have never heard of). Normally we do a potluck dinner. But we all love tea, so I suggested this time we try the high tea at the Pardee Home. Everyone was enthusiastic about the idea, so we reserved a lovely Saturday afternoon for a high tea and tour. We were advised it would take two hours total, one hour for the tea and one hour for the tour. Carlos joined us, but Inez decided to stay home at the last minute, as she'd already been on one of the Pardee Home's public tours.

Once inside, we were directed into the dining room for our tea. There is also the option in summer of having it served outside in the garden, where the original carriage house and water tower are located. As the fog was coming in, we were fine with having tea inside. Also, although the garden is lovely, it is unfortunately overlooked by a large and not particularly aesthetic condominium building occupying the other half of the block.

The dining room is a true formal dining room with a three-windowed bay. The tall windows provide magnificent natural light in the afternoon. There's a massive sideboard and a modest vitrine (glass-fronted cabinet), part of a large set of German baroque dining furniture purchased at auction by the Pardees around 1919. The vitrine holds the family's elegant gold-rimmed Limoges china. A simpler built-in sideboard of ebony-stained oak, which was added later to the dining room, holds everyday china and glassware. There's also a little cubbyhole filled with pressed glass bowls and salad plates – very possibly real Libby ware (http://www.myantiquemall.com/AQstories/libbey/libbey.html) – where you'd expect to find a fusebox!

Our table was set for a formal service. The volunteers use antique porcelain plates, servers, teacup and saucer, but they are all assorted patterns acquired by thrifting, not tableware owned by the family. This is common to tea shops everywhere and a charming touch that sets the mood for something different than our modern obsession with matchy-matchy (of which I'm as guilty as anyone else, LOL).

The tea is English Breakfast, a safe choice when people aren't sure if they're dealing with real tea connoisseurs or not. It's brewed in the kitchen, and they'll bring out as many refills as you wish. We kept them busy, with at least four full pots of tea as we ate and talked, catching up on what's happened since our last group visit. 

I'll list what we had, but we were advised that the volunteers are always experimenting and coming up with new ideas. It's hard to imagine how they could top what they gave us. But who knows? Some of you, we hope, may be intrigued enough to reserve a high tea for yourself (they'll do it for a minimum of four people, with a maximum of twelve), and could end up with an even better meal than we got.

The tea started with the savories. One plate held open-faced crustless rounds topped with herbed cream cheese and a nice quality lox, each one decorated with a little fan of fresh dill on top. Another plate held triangular ham sandwiches with arugula, white bread on one side and the other a thin dark pumpernickel. Both were excellent.

A two-tier server held more. There were cucumber sandwiches that far surpassed any cucumber sandwiches Carlos and I have ever had before. Also on crustless rounds of white bread, they were generously spread with a fresh cheese spread – perhaps mascarpone with a touch of crème fraiche? – with paper-thin slices of seedless cucumber elegantly folded into an overlapping circle on top. Suko suggested that perhaps they had salted the cucumber in order to soften it a bit, although we didn't taste any extra salt. However they accomplished it, it was both visually beautiful and delectable.

The server also held lovely puffs of paté a choux filled with chicken salad. This is the same dough used for cream puffs and eclairs. Pepperidge Farm's frozen puff pastry has supplanted it in our minds, but at one time this dough was a French standard. One seldom sees paté a choux used for savory fillings nowadays, but it has had a long and esteemed culinary history for banquet and brunch dishes. 

Far easier for the home cook than making puff pastry, paté a choux enjoyed a brief spurt of middle-class popularity in the early '60's as a dressed-up Sunday brunch entrée, especially in the summer, filled with cold chicken or tuna salads, before convenience foods overran the supermarkets. It is a thin dough shell, more elastic than puff pastry and thus better able to be picked up and eaten, rather than crumbling apart in the fingers. These were small puffs, so the chicken was minced fine, as was proper.

Out came a second course of savories. This pleased Carlos immensely, who much prefers savories to desserts. One plate held small rolled toasts – crustless bread rolled thin (yes, with a rolling pin: a neat trick almost never seen any longer, the manual precursor of today's panini grills), spread with a yummy mushroom filling, rolled into little logs and tied with chive strings. This last little garnish gained my deep admiration, since I've done this for sushi fillings. I can assure you it's one of the most tiresome things imaginable to do, although admittedly since there was only one of each item per person, they only had to tie seven chive strings.

Another two-tier server finished the savories, with yummy crisp cheese wafers on the top plate and lovely little filo pastries holding an artichoke filling on the bottom plate. We were very impressed with the food so far. The presentation was elegant, the garnishes weren't overdone. Everything was delicious, creative, and perfectly executed, with a welcome variety from the usual tea shop offerings.

Next came a separate course of currant scones still warm from the oven, served with strawberry preserves and clotted cream. These were kept small in size, which was perfect. We were getting full from all this wonderful food! 

The last course is always pastries, and again the Pardee Home volunteers did a terrific job. 

First out were individual Pavlovas, the classic piped meringue shell with whipped cream and fresh fruit on top. In this case, it was blueberries, a thin slice of nectarine, and a raspberry. The Pavlovas themselves can be made ahead of time and tightly packaged to prevent our ever-present humidity from softening the shells, but they can only be filled and presented at the last minute. These were perfect, a fine reminder of a time when this was one of the great classical French desserts served only at fine restaurants.

Next came lemon curd tartlets and individual cheesecakes topped with a piped swirl of chocolate. The cheesecakes were excellent, but the lemon tartlets were exceptional. This was a Meyer lemon curd needing no whipped cream to ease the tartness, and a crisp yet tender pastry shell that is one volunteer's secret recipe which he refuses to give out to anyone. Our best guess is that there's some nut flour in there, or perhaps a touch of toasted rice flour. Whatever it is, the shell is remarkably thin and the flavor complements the lemon curd nicely.

Still two more plates! One plate held an almond brittle, broken into bite-sized pieces. A thin layer of perfect toffee with the proper soft texture, was covered with an equally thin layer of dark chocolate and then topped with finely sliced almonds. If you are an Almond Roca fan, you might know that Enstrom Candies of Colorado makes a much finer version. But when homemade, this candy confection is infinitely better, one of those foods where portion control consists of whatever is on the plate. We were grateful they gave us only a small plate of brittle, for we certainly would have eaten a much larger amount of it had there been more.

The last plate held an assortment of three types of cookies. One was white meringue kisses (yes, like a Hershey's chocolate kiss candy – this meringue cookie is where Hershey's got the idea to begin with). The second was chocolate macaroons, with the lovely chewy texture I like, that comes from the addition of flour to the beaten egg whites. The last was called "WBC", or World's Best Cookie. It was a very fine cookie indeed, just barely sweetened, with a tender crumbly texture partially due to finely chopped walnuts. 

Our tour guide was late arriving due to traffic. However, that worked out well as we were so busy chatting with one another, as well as talking to one of the volunteers about how much we were enjoying all the wonderful food, that our one hour tea was running into two hours!

All of us have had high tea at commercial tea shops, so we are familiar with the setup and the usual offerings. We agreed that hands-down, this was the finest high tea we'd ever had. Since it's all volunteer-created and they're not trying to turn a profit, the food is not just generous in quantity but also consistently excellent in quality. 

This is a high tea as served by good cooks who are cooking as if they are entertaining you in their own homes – and even better, who are cheerfully competing with one another to see who can produce the "best" goodies.

We really, really, really recommend that anyone who would enjoy a civilized and delicious tea, come here. The high tea is a ridiculous bargain price of $25 (remember, that includes a free tour), and is easily worth twice that – which means you can afford to be generous and drop a two-figure bill in the donation box to help support this unique museum and its hard-working volunteers. 

Seven people, high tea. Since Inez canceled at the last moment, it contributed to our stuffing ourselves silly, since there was seven of everything. But even if I'd had time to cancel the extra portion, it would have been more than enough food for everyone, even Carlos. $25/each, and all of us left hefty donations for the museum. 

These folks worked hard for us, and deserved it! A complete five-star experience, all the way.

===============

Addendum: Touring the Pardee Home Museum

After our delicious and generous tea, we had a private tour of Pardee Home, which we all enjoyed. A lovely Italianate, modified by the family over the decades, the Pardee Home is very far from the formal elegance of Filoli in Woodside, or the showy post-earthquake Baroque display of Adolph and Alma's famed Spreckels Mansion in San Francisco's Pacific Heights. Built by Pardee patriarch Enoch, the Home Museum is filled with the eccentric collections of people who accumulated things they liked in a magpie fashion – not because they wanted to impress anyone, but because they found something fun or pleasing about certain things. 

The massive German dining room set, mentioned in the high tea review above, came up at auction because in 1917 a German diplomat based in San Francisco was arrested for treason when his role in the Hindu-German Conspiracy came to light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93German_Conspiracy_Trial). To raise funds, he sold his personal items. There's over a dozen pieces to the set, including a massive sideboard, heavy carved chairs with monogrammed backs (the letter "B" is carved into the design) and table, a vitrine cabinet which holds the family's Limoges, and a rolling cart. The sales price was reportedly $250. 

Stepping out into the hallway, our guide proudly pointed out one of the most valuable items in the home, a lamp hanging from the ceiling. The six glass panels are original Carleton Watkins glass prints, made directly from the 18x22" glass plate negatives Watkins took in Yosemite Valley in 1861, prior to the Civil War. 

I'm sure most people don't realize what a piece of history they're looking at. These are incredibly rare and valuable photographs. They are part of the famous series of photographs by Watkins which were instrumental in helping to convince Congress to create the Yosemite National Park in 1890. Up until that time, only Yosemite Valley was a park, the acreage deeded to the state by the federal government in 1864 (which is why you'll see some conflicting dates if you happen to Google for Yosemite's opening year). Watkins, whose tragic life is detailed by Smithsonian magazine at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/carleton-watkins.html, was an ardent conservationist. 

These fragile glass plates are legacies from a time when photographing nature required a dozen strong mules and hired help in order to manage the 85-lb Mammoth camera with its awkward, heavy lenses and fragile glass plates, along with a portable darkroom and all the necessary chemicals. In a way it's a shame they are hanging 7' in the air, above your head. The direct negative-to-print on glass is incredibly detailed because there's no need to enlarge the image for printing. The range of graytones in such equipment far exceeds the later invention of film negatives. If those glass plates were at eye level, the viewer would be able to literally count how many leaves were on each tree on the side facing the camera, despite the fact that the camera is standing several miles distant. 

The interior of the Pardee Home is like going into an unexpectedly big antique store, a hodgepodge of odd treasures, but not necessarily expensive ones. The guides take you through both floors and also include the unfurnished cupola, which some people rent for small events (it's a tiny room). There's so much to see in every corner, the miscellany is overwhelming. 

Because the Pardees loved to travel and also had many friends who would bring them little gifts, there are all kinds of curios stuffed into cabinets and corners, from the rare and exquisite to the kitschy and commonplace. There's everything from a collection of candleholders, to Polynesian war spears and assorted swords, to little piles of pretty but mostly commonplace rocks and shells, of the kind that kids like to collect on camping trips or vacations. It's pretty clear they never threw anything away!

Although there's a rough organization to what's in the many tall cabinets with their glassed-in doors, the sheer volume of items means most of it isn't displayed well. In fact, only a few of the cabinets have lighting, so it was a good thing I had my mini-flashlight along. We were able to espy fine 19^th century cloisonné vases stuffed into a dark corner. One lower shelf held an amazing folk art piece, what looked like a Chinese war boat complete with men manning the oars and a top level platform with piles of cannonballs, all made out of small little twigs tied together with string. There is an amazing assortment of teapots, everything from cheap 1960's pottery to genuine 19^th century Yixing teapots (http://www.sevencups.com/tea-culture/yixing-teaware/making-yixing-teaware/) and similar vintage Japanese tetsubin, or cast iron teapots.

The guides were very generous about letting us look at the many objets d'art, which ended up making our tour twice as long as it was supposed to be, because everyone was having too much fun to cut it short. There's a small room with two umbrella stands crammed full of walking sticks; a large glass-fronted cabinet with more sea shells; a smaller cabinet filled with mounted insect and animal specimens, including a couple of human skulls. The room also holds a modest collection of miscellaneous weapons – European, Asian, and Polynesian. 

The dressers in the bedrooms still have clothes and accessories like gloves, neatly folded and stored in the drawers. One closet still holds some of the late Victorian and Edwardian women's clothes: fine muslin with endless yards of ribbon and lace trimmings, tiny brocade jackets with velvet collars. Another closet holds some of George Pardee's clothes (Enoch's son, who was Governor of CA when the 1906 earthquake hit San Francisco, as well as the founder of the East Bay Municipal Water District which all us locals just call EBMUD) – his National Guard uniforms, a black wool tuxedo with long tails.

The braided rag rugs in the bedrooms made by Mrs. Helen (George's wife, to differentiate from their daughter "Miss Helen") are true Americana, and also indicate she either came from or grew up in New England, where European and English immigrants brought this rural rugmaking style to our shores. An example of classic Yankee thrift, it is a way to use up every last piece of cloth (there's a quick 3-page paper on the history of rag rugs at http://higheredbcs.wiley.com/legacy/college/nielson/0471606405/supplementary/History_of_Rag_Rugs.pdf). 

I was surprised to see that in one of the closets there was a large empty box with a big logo that said "Pequot Muslin". Having visited friends in SE Connecticut, we were familiar with the name, from the local Pequot tribe. This again indicated that George Pardee's wife had New England roots. When I got back home I checked on the web and discovered that for many decades there was a Pequot Mills Company in Salem, MA, begun by former sea captain Nathaniel Griffin, which produced cotton goods. Opened in 1847, the mill was a microcosm of American industrial history, including a 1933 workers strike for better working conditions by the immigrant groups who then worked at the mills: French-Canadians, Poles, Italians and Russians. Pequot Mills was one of the first steam-operated cotton mills in the country. It closed for good in 1953, when operations were merged and moved to South Carolina as the New England manufacturing base began to disappear into history (Wiki's short entry: http://www.noblenet.org/salem/wiki/index.php/Pequot_Mills). 

There's a wonderful art collection, much of it apparently done by Mrs. Helen. She never signed her work, but several pictures are known to be hers, and they are very fine, especially the portraiture. I was allowed to take a closer look at one of the upstairs bathrooms which are converted from side porches, so it has a couple of steps down. Hiding the tub was a large screen that looked intriguing. It turned out to be two three-panel screens, dark wooden frames around tall narrow canvases painted with wilderness landscape scenes. There's no name, so we guessed the panels might have been done by Mrs. Helen, as the brushwork looked similar to other pictures that have been identified as her work. One is badly damaged, but the second is in pretty good condition with just some minor tears. 

This is one of the frustrating things about volunteer work in such historic homes. The provenance of so many items, which the family took for granted, goes undocumented, and is so easily lost when there's no one left to ask. How do you know if it's valuable enough to save, when you don't know or have the funds to have an appraisal done?

Again, the Pardee Home is not a grand mansion. It's a family home, albeit a wealthy, well-educated, well-traveled family. A bit eccentric, not at all pretentious, with the definite flavor of California's wide-open spaces (contrast Mark Twain's dark, rather stuffy Victorian in Hartford CT with Enoch Pardee's more open-to-the-weather Italianate). 

The tea was fabulous. The home was unexpectedly charming and odd. All of us want to return – this time with bigger flashlights and some time to scrutinize the contents of some of the more intriguing cabinets!

So...go visit! They need the donations (they don't get any state funds). This is classic California, a nobody who came out West and reinvented himself, made some money and became someone important, whose family contributed to our state and local history. 

And schedule that tea with some friends. It's a great way to spend a few hours, because so often we don't pay attention to the interesting places in our own backyard. More's the pity.