Through the Looking Glass at Alice's Tea Cup

By Reena Jana
January 19, 2011

Haley and Lauren Fox

Haley Fox and Lauren Fox, the owners of Alice's Tea Cup and the authors of the new Alice's Tea Cup cookbook

Celebrity parents from Julia Roberts to Conan O’Brien love the New York City restaurant known as Alice’s Tea Cup, where kids are literally sprinkled with “pixie dust” shimmery powder and don fairy wings as they eat scrumptious, moist scones with flavors such as Chocolate Strawberry and Banana Butterscotch. Adults love Alice’s Tea Cup, too: the staff of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart has a weekly standing order for their scones, and the Alice's Tea Cup's grown-up menu includes yummy mojitos and martinis infused with Moroccan Mint and Earl Grey teas, respectively.

New York's first Alice’s Tea Cup opened on the Upper West Side in 2001, and today there are two more locations across Central Park on the Upper East Side. Alice’s Tea Cup’s co-founders, the sisters Haley Fox and Lauren Fox, recently published a cookbook, simply titled Alice’s Tea Cup. The colorful volume includes mouth-watering photos and a multitude of recipes, many of which involve tea, from the Lapsang Souchong Smoked Chicken Salad to the Double Chocolate Cookie, which asks for Mauritius tea leaves. The Alice's Tea Cup cookbook covers a spectrum of meals and even offers menu and decorating suggestions for a variety of parties, from bridal showers to a guy’s birthday bash. The Fox sisters even include tips on how to tea stain fabrics and dye garments and linens using, say, chamomile tea (for a light golden hue).

Alice's Tea Cup On a magically snowy January morning, Lauren and Haley Fox were having breakfast at the original Alice’s Tea Cup on West 73^rd Street and Columbus Avenue. They sipped an herbal chai tea and ate their restaurant’s signature pumpkin scones, drizzled with caramel and served with jam and clotted cream, as well as poached eggs served on—you guessed it—savory scones. If you’ve been to Alice’s Tea Cup, you know that the restaurant has a whimsical, comfortable, sophisticated-yet-laid back atmosphere. Those adjectives, by the way, describe the Fox sisters, too—they’re the pretty, hip, friendly, and creative siblings that everyone wishes she had.

Luckily for us, they generously shared their favorite tea-inspired memories, as well as their eBay shopping tips. Haley Fox and Lauren Fox turn to eBay online auctions for many of their mismatched tea cups and saucers, the lighting and furniture in their restaurants and homes, antique Alice In Wonderland paraphernalia and even their own elegantly casual wardrobes and fashion accessories.

The Inside Source: What’s your favorite tea moment from growing up?

Haley Fox: Our dad’s thumbprint was grooved into the handle of his favorite tea mug. It broke, but he got a new one, and even the new one now has his thumbprint molding into it.

Lauren Fox: There were always tea leaves all over the counter and Mom complained about cleaning them up. We drank loose teas all the time. Our mom pre-bagged our teas and brought them to restaurants.

The Inside Source: What are your favorite teas?

Haley Fox: I love Earl Grey. But we are complete opposites. We have different tea favorites.

Lauren Fox: I hate Earl Grey! The perfuminess, the bergamot is offensive to my mouth. (Laughs.) But I love rose mélange. Now I’m into straight black teas. I rotate favorite teas.

Haley Fox: She’s very into straight morning black teas. But if I’m drinking herbal, I’m drinking herbal chai. If I’m drinking straight black tea, I drink Mauritius or Cameroon teas. We recommend those two for people who like coffee but want to try tea. If you want caffeine, those are good.

The Inside Source: It’s great that you have different tastes, because then you can help each other balance the menus at Alice's Tea Cup.

Lauren Fox: And I mostly eat raw food.

Haley Fox: And our staff—we have vegetarians and vegans who work with us. So we get a lot of perspectives when we plan our recipes and menus.

blueberry lemon cake and cakestand with treat from Alice's Tea Cup (all book images by Ben Fink)

The Inside Source: Do you think tea is getting trendy?

Lauren Fox: It didn’t hurt that Great Britain made Kate Moss its Ambassador of Tea.

Haley Fox: As a culture, we’re always looking for the next thing. Coffee has been done full tilt. Coffee can’t be done any more. And article after article about the health benefits of tea, such as its cancer fighting properties, has been published. People are paying attention to tea.

Lauren Fox: Tea is becoming more mainstream as people catch on and learn about how healthy tea is.

Haley Fox: Plus, the art of tea is very much like that of wine—the flavors and the subtleties

Lauren Fox: The time of year the leaves are picked, the altitudes where they were grown—it all matters.

The Inside Source: We’ve heard you both do a lot of buying and selling on eBay, both for your professional and personal lives.

Haley Fox: We get almost all of our mismatched tea cups for our restaurants on eBay.

Lauren Fox: And all of our Alice in Wonderland memorabilia as well. I also buy lots of vintage clothes and accessories on eBay. And then I take very good care of them, and re-sell them. I believe in recycling, and this is a form of recycling. It’s wonderful to see there is a person for everything.

Haley Fox: If I had advice for anyone using eBay, it would be that you have to have patience, you have to learn your bidding limit, be ready to lose, be ready to win, and most of all know what you are looking for. When you win, you really feel like a winner.

And I have to add that the eBay search engine is fantastic. We’ve had hours of fun with our family researching tea cups and Alice in Wonderland-related antiques.

Lauren Fox: Oh, and nearly everything that appears in the tea-party photos in our cookbook—the cake stands, the plates—I bought on eBay.

The Inside Source: Your Alice's Tea Cup New York restaurants have a lot of fans. How have they reacted to your cookbook?

Lauren Fox: People were waiting for us to share the pumpkin scone recipe. And now that we have, they are writing and calling to us, saying that they think our pumpkin scone recipe has a misprint!

Haley Fox: See, what makes ours different is that we don’t have a hard biscuity thing. Then you add pumpkin, which people don’t eat all the time. We make ours really, really gingery. That’s what makes it popular. But some people think it’s too spicy. They think it’s a ¼ teaspoon and not a ¼ cup, which we wrote.

Lauren Fox: We see a lot of people writing about this online. And we get emails. We made the recipe again several times to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with our recipe. We had our friends and family try it. We tried it with a ¼ teaspoon, but it wasn’t the same.

Haley Fox: Real fans will call us at the restaurant and ask us about it. It’s amazing. We have a real community. And we tell them, if it’s too spicy, just cut back on it. The ginger is what makes it special.

(all photos credit: Ben Fink)

Want to organize a stylish tea party? Take a look at what Haley and Lauren Fox of Alice’s Tea Cup are hunting for right now on eBay.

Vintage Tea Cups

(buy it now price, $20)

Nearly all of the tea cups and saucers at the Alice’s Tea Cup locations were purchased on eBay. The Fox sisters enlist their mother to hunt down pretty patterns, such as this one.
Antique Alice in Wonderland Print

(buy it now price, $63)

Haley and Lauren are always purchasing collectibles related to the classic story of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, like this 1927 print.
Oilily Girl’s Dress

(buy it now price, $55)

Lauren is looking for a stylish dress by the fashionable label Oilily for her boyfriend’s young daughter on eBay, such as this adorable colorful number—perfect for a little girl to wear to an afternoon tea party.
Antique Tea Pot

(buy it now price, $48)

The Fox sisters are always seeking beautiful antique tea pots for their restaurants, such as this stoneware pot with a pewter lid.
Alice’s Tea Cup Cookbook

(buy it now price, $21.24)

As Haley points out, copies of their recently published cookbook are always readily available on eBay.
Vintage Sconce

(buy it now price, $98.78)

The Fox sisters turned to eBay for the charming sconces that light the original Alice’s Tea Cup, which give the restaurant a homey glow. Haley says she also found the lighting for her family’s apartment on the site as well.
West Elm Coupon

(buy it now price, $18.99)

Haley likes to create a comfortable yet modern atmosphere for entertaining at home with her husband, Michael Eisenberg (who is also the director of operations for Alice’s Tea Cup), and their kids. Ever the savvy business person, she says she looks to eBay for coupons for her favorite home furnishings stores, such as West Elm, to outfit her New York City apartment.
Antique Cake Stand

(buy it now price, $59.99)

Lauren purchased the cake stands shown in the Alice’s Tea Cup cookbook on eBay.