One of our must-do’s when we visit Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, is the Garden View Tea Room at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa.

The elegant tea room, with it’s views of the magnificent resort grounds, serve to instantly put us in a relaxed state of mind in the middle of what can be a crazy busy vacation. Sitting there sipping our tea and enjoying the beautiful plates of sandwiches, scones, and sweet delights, we feel almost like royalty. Sadly, it’s the one thing our girls said they were really missing from our recently cancelled trip.

Campbell’s British Foods & Tea Room

Trying to make the best of a sad situation, I decided to take everyone to the closest and next best thing to try and cheer them up. In this case, Campbell’s British Food & Tea Room here in Barrie (you can find their website here).

I was smart enough to phone a couple of days in advance and made a reservation for the four of us this past Saturday morning. The tea room is small and popular so it can fill up quickly and reservations are recommended.

As much as my little family loves all things tea, we’d never been to Campbell’s before, but you can bet we’ll certainly be going again in the very near future. When you first walk in, you’re on the edge of both a shop filled with an incredible assortment of British goods to your left, and a quaint little tea room on your right. We were quickly greeted with a warm, friendly smile, and directed to our waiting table.

Now we went for breakfast, but they also serve lunch and high tea, and their menu of specialty teas is extensive. I think our girls had gone into the shop expecting a very limited selection of teas having been spoiled by the Grand Floridian experience several times, but they were pleasantly surprised (and maybe even a little overwhelmed) at the 25+ options.

Thankfully, we never felt rushed…in fact, it was completely the opposite. We had a lovely chat with our server more than once throughout our meal, and we were encouraged to take our time. We were able to walk around the shop to look at their fresh pastry display, browse the showcase full of fresh meat pies and sausage rolls, and view the selection in their freezer section.

Everyone eventually made their own tea selection, and when our tea arrived, everyone had their own teapot with (more or less) a matching tea cup. Shortly after that, our food arrived and all of it was hot and terrific.

Being gluten-free, I did ask as soon as we arrived about my options, and unfortunately, Campbell’s does not serve gluten-free toast or pastries. Having done my research and looked at the menu beforehand though, I was prepared for that so not surprised. It didn’t matter – the point of this trip was to give our girls a positive tea experience in place of our missed vacation. However, they did offer to substitute grilled tomato in place of the toast that would normally accompany my meal of choice and I happily accepted that and was not disappointed. Everything was delicious!

After our meal, we finally hit up the shop side of Campbell’s and had fun picking out chips and chocolate bars in flavours we have never seen here in Canada.

Oh, and of course we had to pick out some fresh pastries and meat pies from their display cases as we paid for our meal at the counter on our way out.

Needless to say, we will be hitting Campbell’s again soon to try their high tea…and no doubt pick up a few more British goodies.