Munching at Molly’s Tea Room - Falmouth

Instructions from the seasoned tea partier for navigating Molly’s Tea Room:

1)    DO NOT sit at the table closest to the door unless you happen to be a homesick penguin.

2)    Trophy wives with the world’s loudest children DO NOT get quieter. EVER.

3)    The Queen’s combo is NOT for the dainty eater and NOT for the mayo-phobic…

I got really hungry one day and decided that the Queen’s Combo would be a good idea. Served on a proper 3-tiered tray, it makes you look like a glutton and gives you a sample of at least half the menu. You can sample each little treat like Alice in Wonderland (the Tim Burton version) and get a little taste of the colorful characters that make up the dark world of Underland.

The curried chicken salad and the regular chicken salad are the Hamish Ascot (Alice’s fiancé) and his mother of Molly’s Tea Room, a repugnant blast of curry in one, an unmistakable dryness in both. After encountering such bores, you feel ready to venture past the mundane, down the rabbithole, and explore the other tiers of your Queen’s Combo tray. In addition, your increasing polydipsia from the dryness brings you to sit down to tea with the Mad Hatter.

I exercised caution when approaching the Bandersnatch crab salad but found it quite agreeable when I made peace with it by returning its eye. I’m pretty paranoid about seafood served at a tea shop, and Alice was right to be paranoid about a furry white beast pet of the Red Queen, but the lump crab was good, and an even bigger surprise was that I even liked it despite the celery and big teeth.

Another monster encountered is the assorted little sweets on the 2^nd tier, the Jabberwocky of your pancreas; rich little tidbits that are too small to ever get tired of, and before you know it, you’ve eaten them all…and they’ve eaten your insulin-producing cells.

The cucumber & boursin sandwich is all the pretty perky polish of the Jabberwocky’s nemesis, the white queen. Her crusts are neatly trimmed into little triangles with refreshing cukes as light as her always-fluttering arms, and rich cheese.

The wise Absolem the caterpillar appears as the tarragon egg salad. A staple of tea sandwiches, Absolem achieves a balance with just enough of each ingredient to make them harmonize, much like the wisdom he imparts upon his followers.

As if this wasn’t enough, you are then served an un-birthday scone. IMO, the scone is not really a scone, it’s more of a puffy giant cookie – the scones here are too sweet and not doughy enough in texture to constitute real scones. That being said, the raspberry white chocolate with clotted cream is an irresistible puffy giant unbirthday cookie.

If you’re a redhead looking for a job in Falmouth, this may be the place for you. Both servers are delightful gingers, and I’ve never met sweeter staff. They’ll bring you whatever you order, keep your water glass full, and tell you to stay and study as long as you’d like even if all you ordered was a scone. If you’re looking for support from kind strangers or just a peaceful place of study, Molly’s is just what the doctor ordered.