From London to Los Angeles, from Bangkok and beyond, the British tradition of afternoon high tea is enjoying a renaissance, with younger people embracing a ritual once considered a bit stuffy that is evolving into a more playful experience of late. Just in time for this resurgence of interest, San Miguel de Allende has gained a Victorian-style tearoom.
Simply named The Tea Room, it has everything an Anglophile could hope for: tiered trays filled with classic teatime fare, including finger sandwiches, scones, crumpets, sausage rolls, chicken salad, quiche, clotted cream and lemon curd. And, of course, authentic English tea.
An early call to the culinary arts
This is also a love story.
Once upon a time, a youngster named Ryan McNab was raised by his grandparents in Leeds, England.
“My grandma taught me how to cook,” McNab says. “All of my earliest memories are helping to make food for the family on a Saturday. Just sandwiches, but I’d make faces on the bread with olives.”
Ryan began working in pubs at 16.
“I went through the school system, but it failed me, or I failed it. I don’t really know. At 18, I started serving drinks at a bar. Quickly got into pub management. I realized it wasn’t for me. The stress. Dealing with drunks. I decided to go back to school.”
Back at university in Leeds, Ryan met a young Mexican woman named Julieta Moreno.
“I was 17, living in the U.K., and attending design college,” Julieta said. “One day, this cute English guy offered to lend me one of his colored pencils. That was it. Like Ed Sheeran’s lyrics: We were just kids when we fell in love.”
During those early years, Ryan continued to work in pubs to put himself through school.
“Pub management taught me that you have to be prepared for the chef not to show up, so I would step in. Wash dishes. Do prep work. If you do that for long enough, you learn the ropes.”
Then, Julieta had to return to Mexico to complete her education.
“Of course, being so young, we had no idea how to make the relationship last the hardships of ‘adulting,’” she said.
With Julieta gone, Ryan focused on baking and became a successful pizza chef, opening several restaurants and a food truck. He also spent six months running high tea in the kitchen at the Castle Howard Estate, a private home set in 1,000 acres of sweeping parkland within the North Yorkshire countryside
“It was a 300-year-old property, and most of the people who worked there also lived there. It was a bit like working in ‘Downton Abbey,’” Ryan said.
But Ryan and Julieta struggled to keep in contact.
“I was working full-time and had very little vacation,” Ryan said. “This was in 2006, before Facebook, or even iPhones. We had to meticulously plan our calls. ‘You have to be by this particular phone on Mexican time, and I need to phone at exactly the right time English time.’ It was just really hard.”
Estranged sweethearts reunite
Ryan and Julieta eventually drifted apart, not speaking for 15 years — until a cat photo on Instagram reconnected them.
“What brought me to Mexico was — well, weirdly, it was a cat,” Ryan said. ”I had a Maine Coon named Abby, a beautiful cat that I was given for my birthday during COVID. I was locked down in this tiny cottage, and I posted a picture of Abby on Instagram.”
Julieta’s mom, in Querétaro, saw the picture and commented. She and Ryan began chatting. A few days later, Ryan “plucked up the courage” to reach out and ask Julieta how she was doing. Was there a husband? Kids?
“Fifteen years later, after no communication, Ryan decides to send me a message just saying, ‘Hi, how are you?’” Julieta said with a laugh.
A few months later, after many texts and voicemails, the pressing question became: “Are we back together?”
Ryan visited Julieta in San Miguel de Allende the following November for Day of the Dead. Three weeks after being together again, he proposed.
“A new adventure began,” Julieta said. “It was my turn to show him the way of life in my country. He [quickly] embraced this culture and began adapting his love for cooking to new ingredients and a new altitude. Good thing his wife loves eating!”
The English crumpet arrives in San Miguel de Allende
Julieta’s parents, who once lived in the U.K., missed a few hard-to-find specialties in Mexico.
“One day, Julieta’s mom asked me if I knew how to make crumpets,” Ryan said. “They had a list of things they missed, crumpets being the main thing, but also lemon curd and shortbread. I thought maybe if I perfected crumpets, I could sell them. There’s an organic farm called Chinaberry here with a website where people can order fresh fruit and veg, but also items from different vendors. They said I could work with them.”
Ryan started a small business and called it Señor Crumpet.
Business was initially good, but during the tourism low season that year, Ryan found himself lacking customers. Julieta mentioned that the upscale San Miguel de Allende French bakery Marulier was hiring an assistant baker.
Ryan applied.
“I thought, ’It can’t hurt to try.’ I went in and had a chat with the owners and head chef, and they were really lovely. The interview turned into a ‘When can you start?’ situation.”
It was while Ryan was splitting his time between Marulier and Señor Crumpet that Eve Mickendrow (the southern belle) entered the story. Eve had relocated to San Miguel from South Carolina, where for 25 years she’d owned Time Well Spent, an English teahouse.
Ryan and Eve joked about the fact that she’d operated a teahouse and that he was a British baker. One day, Eve said to Ryan, “Can I take you somewhere?”
That “somewhere” was the spot she had chosen to open a new tearoom in town.
The location was a quaint, a charming, upper-floor space not far from downtown. Eve’s vision was to create an inviting traditional British tearoom in the Mexican mountains.
‘It felt like fate’
“The initial idea,” Ryan said, “was that she would open the tearoom and I would supply her with crumpets and scones. The more we talked, the more it seemed like we should partner up. Eve and I have both said all the way through the process that it was never stressful. It just felt like fate.”
“Eve did everything,” Ryan continued. “A color palette, chinaware, vintage teapots, a fairy theme with a tea party room for kids. But we agreed it should never be too flashy. It needs to be about people sharing tea. We want people to go and feel like they could sit for however long, have tea and a natter. If you sit down and want to stay for three or more hours, that’s great.”
“I love the concept,” Julieta said. “It’s a space that invites coziness, the warmth of friendship and the tranquility of reading a book with a nice cup of tea.”
- Location: Salida a Celaya 6, Interior 5, Zona Centro, Guadiana, 37760 San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato
- Hours: Thursday–Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Closed Monday–Wednesday)
- High Tea Service: 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. (Flexible for parties)
- Reservations: Call +52 415 200 7200
Anne Richards is a San Miguel de Allende-based author.
