Proper Hotel
Tea: ☕️ ☕ ☕
Food: 🍰 🍰 🍰
Ambience: 🌸🌸🌸🌸
Overall rating: 💖 💖 💖
Tags: modern, formal, english
It was a big deal in the San Francisco hospitality community when the Proper Hotel opened in Fall 2017: it’s the first new luxury hotel in S.F. in over a decade, and it’s located on a sometimes-seedy block of Market Street that is often euphemistically described as “in the process of revitalization.” (Less euphemistically: the day H.A.T.S. had tea at the Proper, we worried we might be late to our reservation because a block away, police officers had shot a homeless man’s dog and shut down traffic on Market Street.) And when a luxury hotel is named “Proper,” how can they not offer an afternoon tea service among their amenities? Admittedly, the Proper’s tea flew under our radar until we read about it in an Eater listicle, but as soon as we did, we had to check it out.
Entering the hotel, it becomes clear that the name “Proper” is intended in a tongue-in-cheek way. It offers eclectic interiors with a whimsical vibe. Designed by Kelly Wearstler in her famed “Hollywood Regency” style, the lobby features marble floors, gallery-walls of Cubist artwork, brightly colored upholstery, mismatched lamps, and a statue of a Great Dane covered in matte black paint. The servers are friendly and enthusiastic rather than quiet and formal, and their uniforms allow them to wear “pieces of flair” (our main server sported four or five enamel pins, including a gay-pride rainbow). The teapots are shiny and silver; the flatware is heavy brushed bronze. This mixed-metal aesthetic aroused mixed feelings in us, but it definitely seems of a piece with the Wearstler vision.
Amidst these splendid surroundings, we were treated to some of the best people-watching we’ve ever experienced on a H.A.T.S outing, or indeed in all of San Francisco. Wedding parties, little girls in dress-up frocks, two businessmen in posh suits enjoying a mid-afternoon brandy in the otherwise empty bar… if you lament the dearth of fashion displayed by San Franciscans, you need to get yourself to the Proper Hotel lobby, stat. We also note that the hotel restrooms, which feature Aesop products and an inspirational Friedrich Schiller quote beside the sink, are open to the general public — a rarity on this stretch of Market Street. Use this knowledge wisely.
The hotel offers six varieties of tea, sourced from Leaves & Flowers in Berkeley. With only five H.A.T.S. members attending, we had to pass over the chamomile, but were able to sample the Rosella Mint, African Rooibos, Assam Chai, Yin Hao Jasmine, and Deep Breakfast. Contrary to our assumption that the Rosella Mint would be a delicate rosy blend, it turned out to be a strong, tangy, red-colored and red-flavored hibiscus-mint blend. We really liked the chai, with its assertive ginger, cardamom, and turmeric notes. The jasmine tea was pleasant, though its window between under-brewed and bitter was slim. Refills of hot water arrived promptly, but the use of loose-leaf teas meant that we could not control the brew times.
Four varieties of tea sandwich appeared on shiny silver trays. For perhaps the first time at a H.A.T.S. outing, the turkey sandwich was our favorite, at least among those of us who eat meat: with sliced cheese, mustard, and cranberry sauce, it was pleasingly savory. The cucumber sandwich was on the hearty side, with plenty of cream cheese; the thick red coating of cayenne on the side of the egg salad sandwich was visually striking but made it messy and somewhat unappealing to eat.
The presence of a sweet Nutella-banana sandwich during the first course had some of us worried that the rest of the tea service would be an unmitigated sugar rush. But the Proper Hotel is cleverer than that: if one of the sandwiches is sweet, then one of the scones shall be savory, and they’ll also throw in a homemade English muffin for good measure. To accompany these, the hotel provided softened butter with sea salt, which paired very well with the savory scone. The English muffin, however, was disappointingly devoid of the “nooks and crannies” that can be found in even the most basic grocery-store muffin. There were also sweeter treats on the étagère: a lemon-blueberry scone, a cream puff, a raspberry-iced doughnut hole, and a lavish three financiers per person. Overall, this made for one of the most filling scone-and-sweets courses we have experienced, a hearty carbo-load.
As usual, we requested more clotted cream as soon as the scones emerged (the servers promptly brought it over) and then conducted a quasi-scientific investigation of its substance. The Proper Hotel clotted cream had us stymied: it didn’t seem quite, well, proper, but it definitely wasn’t whipped cream or whipped butter. And there was an odd coating of whey on the bottom of the clotted-cream vessels; was this a sign that the hotel had made the cream in-house, or a sign that it was industrially manufactured? Our investigators reached no conclusions.
The Proper Hotel is evidently San Francisco’s newest hotel tea service, and some kinks remain to be worked out. Struggling to set our five pots of tea down on the low table, our server spilled one of them all over the figured carpet. (He promptly brought a replacement.) And the furniture, though visually in line with the hotel’s aesthetics and seemingly luxurious, did not have the balanced weight indicative of quality furnishings — when Marissa leaned over the side of her coral-brocade armchair to investigate the spill, she nearly tipped over! The staff is happy to accommodate dietary restrictions, but it would be easier to explain our restrictions if the menus indicated what kinds of sandwiches and sweets were on offer that day. The menu and servers should also be clearer that the Rosella Mint is hibiscus-based, not rose-based. And, while the lobby setting makes for great people-watching, it can also feel a little busier and louder and more bustling than we’d like for afternoon tea. We wondered why tea service does not instead take place in the hotel’s “Villon” restaurant/bar, a gorgeous space in rich blues and bronzes, visible to us as we had our tea but tantalizingly inaccessible behind a Proper velvet rope.
Date attended: August 9, 2019
Attendees: Marissa, Erica, Hannah, Tom, & Karen
Price/seat: $39/person
Location: 1100 Market Street, San Francisco
More information: https://www.properhotel.com/hotels/san-francisco/eat-drink/villon/
