Tea time : There are 40 different kinds of tea available by the pot or cup
Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008
When Mary Wohlford bought the historic building in downtown Rogers, she planned to convert the entire upstairs into office space, but people kept asking her about a former business that had operated there for years. As she went in and out of the building people would stop her to ask the same question. Others made their way up the narrow front stairs to ask," When will the tea room reopen ?"
Although she has some experience in restaurant management, Wohlford wasn't planning to revisit that former career. But people just kept asking. Finally she realized that the building needed a restaurant and she started making plans.
Ironically, one of the former owners of the building found herself in a similar situation many years earlier. In 2002 Lorraine Vinson Scott told the Hometown News that she ran the Crumpet Tea Room for a year in the'70 s after the original owners of the business moved back to Texas. Scott said she didn't plan on working while she raised her four children, but if the tea room had closed, she wouldn't have been able to sell the business. After she ran it for a year, she successfully sold the tea room business but retained ownership of the building.
The Crumpet Tea Room was a popular lunch spot in downtown Rogers for over 30 years, but it closed in 2006 and Wohlford bought the 100-year-old Vinson Square building soon after. She and her husband, Dennis, own real estate in Fayetteville, Springfield and Bella Vista, but are residents of Rogers.
She spent a year completely renovating the space, adding a brand new commercial kitchen and redoing all the floors and walls.
When they started repairs on the drop ceiling in the downstairs dining room, they discovered the original tongue and groove ceiling underneath, so they decided to uncover that. The process of uncovering the ceiling revealed one original brick wall that was also uncovered.
While the renovations were going on, Wohlford started visiting estate sales, auctions and flea markets to buy china and furniture for the new enterprise. She also visited the storage building that once belonged to her mother. Now when her siblings or her own children visit the new restaurant, they're likely to spot items they remember from childhood.
Although the tea pot collection, the mismatched china and the floral table clothes resemble the old Crumpet Tea Room, that's wasn't Wohlford's goal. She was looking for the classic tea room atmosphere that she's experienced in many other restaurants, she explained.
The long central hall that runs from the narrow front steps past the small rooms that house both the kitchen and the dining rooms is covered with photographs of downtown Rogers. A few came from the archives of the Rogers Historical Museum, but many more are contemporary photos taken by Wohlford early in the morning when there Main Street Rogers Frisco Film Night are few vehicles around.
"It's similar to the old menu, but we have some unique items," she said about the new restaurant, The Tea Room at Vinson Square.
She developed her own recipe for Orange Rolls, a trademark of the old Crumpet and will also offer quiche and fruit salad with poppy seed dressing. There are 40 kinds of tea available served in a pot or in a single cup.
The new tea room will also serve large salads with a variety of dressings and a family favorite of the Wohlford's, Cornish "Pastry Pie. "The pastry pie consists of vegetables and beef in a pastry shell, she explained. She'll serve it with brown gravy, although she can also provide ketchup which her own family prefers.
The Tea Room on First Street in downtown Rogers is open for lunch Monday through Saturday.
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