Dining Out
It’s Tea Time in Carmel
Tina’s Traditional Old English Tea Kitchen By Chris Bavender, Photos by Mark Lee
Sharing Space
Traditional with a side of quirky that’s what Tina Jesson was going for when she decided to open a tea shop in Carmel. From tea pots and mismatched teacups, to teacup chandeliers and British accents such as the London scene screen, flags, floral bunting, pictures of the royal family and lace table cloths, Tina’s Traditional Old English Tea Kitchen is “all very English – naturally.” “I wanted to create a calm safe place for women to reconnect with the important people in their lives, to remember past memories and create new ones,” said owner Tina Jesson. “We wanted it to be free from the TV, sophisticated but not stuffy. A calm place to visit, that is something very different from the norm here in the States.”
Jesson, who is from Derbyshire, England, moved to Carmel in 2008 when her husband was relocated with Rolls Royce. She thought the area would be ideal for a tearoom but didn’t think she could afford to open one in Carmel. She’d been looking for a location for two years when a mutual friend told her The Simply Sweet Shop was looking to share space. The dream to own a tea shop started when Jesson was 28 and visited an “amazing” tearoom in Yorkshire, called Betty’s. “I vowed then that one day I would own my own business – something like Betty’s - before I was 50. But I never dreamed it would be in America,” Jesson said. “But after moving stateside and not finding some of the familiar foods I was starting to miss from back home, I started baking and selling at farmers markets back in 2011.” That led to hosting tea parties in people’s homes and then, in 2012, Jesson started running pop-up tearooms where she partnered with other business and shared their space running afternoon tea services. She opened her first location in Carmel in 2014. “I had great problems coming up with the name, but Tina’s Traditional Old English Kitchen seemed to describe exactly what we do. At the time I came up with it, I knew I wanted to evolve the brand,” she said. “It’s a traditional old English Kitchen which makes Tra-
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ditional Old English recipes. Adding my name in there just added to the alliteration. We are known as Tina’s Traditional and that’s the name of the website.”
High Tea At Tina’s Traditional you’ll find 10-15
April • May 2015 • Hamilton County Business Magazine