Blackbird Tea Rooms

Hello Blackbird

Forget skinny lattes. The Blackbird is bringing back the old English tea room
In a little corner of the Lanes in Brighton a small piece of history has been recreated. Where once stood a quiet little down-at-heel 1980s café and patisserie there now stands a very unusual, busily bustling, traditional English tea room that unsuspecting visitors may be excused for thinking has been there for over 60 years! Blackbird Tea Rooms has been lovingly and painstakingly restored to the owners’ imagined idea of what a pre-war tea room may have looked like. Lined with mahogany shelves filled with old tea tins and tea-filled sweet jars on the ground floor, and with the prettiest floral wallpaper covered with delightful and eccentric photographs on the first floor, Blackbird has a charm and elegance that is sadly missing from so many of today’s modern ubiquitous High Street chains.

No expense has been spared with the attention to detail that makes this tea room completely unique. All the delicious home-made cakes and scones are served on original vintage china with vintage cutlery, and the tables are dressed with original old lace covers and centre pieces. No meal at the Blackbird would be complete without a visit to the wonderfully original old-fashioned privy at the end of the little courtyard garden. The loo in itself is like a mini museum filled with photos and curios. Not only are there framed examples of old wallpaper dating back over the two hundred or so years of the property that were discovered during the refurbishment, and a cabinet of vintage toiletry accoutrements, but for some reason, hidden among all the other pictures, nature lovers will find a 1920s photo of one of the owners’ very youthful and glamorous but very naked grandmothers, proudly on display!

Blackbird Tea Rooms, 30 Ship Street, Brighton, BN1 1AD
Open 11am – 5.30pm, 01273 249454, www.blackbirdtearooms.com