Tea Houses

Categories / City Services/Restaurants, Cafes, Cafeterias
TEA HOUSES. Public establishments offering tea, coffee and snacks. Tea houses were wide-spread throughout St. Petersburg in the second part of the 19th century, during the so-called tea boom, though tea was available in any tavern from the late 18th century. As the result of extensive tea export by other countries, the price of tea fell from 2-4 roubles (1860) to 60-40 kopecks (1880-90s) a pound. As a rule, tea at tea houses was served "in pairs", consisting of a teapot and a tea kettle. Tea was served with free sugar; pastries, biscuits, balyks, and caviar cost extra. In 1894, sale of alcoholic drinks was banned at tea houses (before then owners, evading taxes, ran drinking-houses or taverns under the guise of tea houses); still, a guest could order rum in any tea house, and wine and even champagne were served in teapots. The majority of tea houses were named after their owners; some had city names (Belgrad at 19 Zverinskaya Street). In the 1890s, so that police could supervise visitors, it was forbidden to cover the windows of tea houses with impenetrable blinds or curtains. Tea houses existed in Petersburg until the mid 1920s, and prospered during the period of the New Economic Policy. In the 1960s, tea houses began to reappear, though they were used more as lunchrooms; proper tea houses were quite rare (in the late 1980s, there was Russkie Samovary, 49 Sadovaya Street). Since the early 1990s, tea houses, along with pancake-houses and other retro establishments, started to reappear, but were in essence either cafes or cafeterias.

Reference: Субботин А. В. Чай и чайная торговля. СПб., 1892; Ивашкевич Н. П., Засурина Л. Н. Искусство чайного стола. Л., 1990.

I. A. Bogdanov. Sadovaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 49
Zverinskaya Street/Saint Petersburg, city, house 19
Субботин А. В. Чай и чайная торговля. СПб., 1892
Ивашкевич Н. П., Засурина Л. Н. Искусство чайного стола. Л., 1990