Gourmet Junction

I’m not sure why everyone hates this place, it serves good food and has a wide selection of teas.

Went there for the first time today, I fell in love. What a cute little place downtown. It has that friendly feel to it. They had a decent selection of tea. They had mango green tea, it was great. I loved the pretzel but option for sandwiches. It’s so good, I really want another one! I work near there and I will be definitely making little stops there between or before work now that I know it exists! :)

I bought a groupon for this place for tea and pastries and was disappointed! It is a pretty place. Tables were decorated with cute table cloths, flowers and teapots. The lady who attended us was nice but the tea and pastries werent worth the money. The tea itself was good and she let us try different ones but the pastries were just cookies, brownies, scones that looked store bought. I wont be back to this place. Not worth it.

My husband and I used a Groupon for their «Cherub Tea» and we both enjoyed it. We did order lunch in addition, and it was very good. Two pretty large sandwiches on very fresh bread, a side item and a brownie for $ 7.95. I’m not sure why people complain about the prices, I thought it was reasonable for what we received. I ordered turkey on the pretzel bread and it was really good!
The tea price without a Groupon is $ 29.99, which I will admit is a little high for what you get, several pastries on a tray, but for $ 15, it was totally worth it. Everything we received was fresh and very good. Store bought? Probably, but we didn’t care. We went for the experience and to spend a quiet afternoon together.
As for the service, it took a bit for our lunch to come out, but I didn’t think it was an unreasonable amount of time. My husband didn’t complain about the wait, so it wasn’t long enough for him to become impatient. Our water was refilled several times throughout as well, always without us having to ask. The owner even stopped by our table to chat for a minute.
I realize this place may not be for everyone, but I would buy another Groupon and have tea there again.

First, I need to get this off of my chest:
High tea is not a pot of tea and some sweets… it’s *dinner*. As in, a full meal.
I realize they put «high tea» in quotation marks on their website, but c’mon. What they’re advertising as «high tea» is actually called afternoon tea.
(Sorry, pet peeve.)
Also, I know that we in America think tea is always consumed out of delicate little cups with handpainted flowers on them (I confess, even I find it a little strange to drink tea any other way) but this is an imported British custom, and most Brits drink their tea from mugs nowadays. So nothing wrong with tea served in mugs.
As strange as it seems, $ 30 for afternoon tea for two people is not all that high.
A relatively-​comparable quaint tea room in the city charges $ 22 *per person*, but you do get clotted cream and sandwiches as well as a whole range of British teas from which to choose. (Or you could just get a cream tea — tea of your choosing, plus a scone with clotted cream and jam — for $ 8, which is towards the middle of the range of what you’d be charged in the UK). The fancier places charge upwards of $ 40-​$ 50 a head.
Point is, there are better choices than this place, but you could do worse.

Four of us went to Gourmet Junction on a Groupon for Tea and Pastries. Yes, pastries seemed store bought but big deal! What a fun and different experience. I mean, come on people, where can you do this kind of outing for four people for $ 30? What a great Saturday with friends catching up on tea in a very cute shop and continuing on throughout the shops in downtown Plainfield. The lady that served us was very kind and has a love for children. She informed us that she will be reading stories while serving hot chocolate to kids during the Christmas season. Doesn’t sound like an awful, rude lady to me?! I would definitely recommend this place! Oh, and my own update… I have an awful cough and stopped in there to see if she had any recommendations for tea and she was very helpful to me. She even made me two cups to go and I didn’t even ask her to do that. :)

Bought a groupon and was very dispaointed, very depressing place, not at all organizied and not a lot of variety for a vegetarian. Everything was store bought not made there. Will not return, very poor parking only on the street.

«You can put a saddle on a pig, but that doesn’t make it a race horse!»
Make no mistakes here folks, this entire place is one misnomer after another — there’s nothing gourmet or angelic about it. In fact it’s not even a tea ROOM. It’s a few tables and chairs thrown into the clutter of counters, freezers and tchotchke that comprises the local ice cream joint, despite the presence of a few highly overpriced soup & dip mixes for sale.
So, there we were, in Plainfield on a beautiful summer afternoon, dazed and hysterical among the chaos of kids in wet bathing suits & flip-​flops running and squealing all over the place with their dripping cones, about to be attacked by buggy-​wielding moms accidentally bashing into the backs of our chairs, and attended to by three different servers after the person who finally got us situated had to not-​so-​nicely ask the old man sitting at our «reserved» table to scoot so she could seat us after a ten minute wait with what I’m sure must have been a WTF look on our faces.
Passing on the expensive sandwiches, we were unceremoniously brought a pot of hot water by server #1 to pour into our overly tall ceramic footed COFFEE mugs and offered a selection of tea bags that appeared to have come from the nearest TJ Maxx to prepare ourselves with demi-​tasse spoons. By this time we were both laughing so hard, it felt like The Mad Hatter himself would be joining us in short order.
But the best was yet to come: one dozen literally bite-​sized assorted sweet tidbits, that even with our Living Social coupon, came out to $ 1 per bite (assuming the tea bags were a buck and a half each and the water was free.)
We sat for at least another 20 minutes trying to find server #2 to bring us a refill on the hot water, and finally flagged down a high school boy who looked as confused and incredulous as we did to make our request. I sure hope he worked there… Of course, server #3 was prompt — she brought the bill!
Anyway, to sum it up, don’t come here expecting Downton Abbey. In fact, I’m thinking that instead of Gourmet Junction, they might want to consider changing the name of this place to «Petticoat Junction»! It would certainly be more appropriate.

This is a very strange little space. It’s part deli, part tea shop and part knick-​knack store. My British buddy and I went there for high tea using a Groupon. She prepped me that the English don’t actually do high tea, so we weren’t expecting anything authentic. We were, however, expecting some homemade pastries, lemon curd and clotted cream. None of these things were to be found.
We consumed some tasty but store-​bought pastries. I recognized a boxed blueberry scone, some mini cupcakes from Target, boxes chocolate truffles from Fannie Mae and a piece of baklava that they were selling at the front desk. It was incredibly overpriced for a few items I could purchase myself and some hot water.
We decided to get lunch, because the pastries were not filling. It took forever and was very standard fare — not even spicy mayo, homemade bread or smoked meats. There was also a hair in my sandwich.
Also, throughout our entire meal, an older gentlemen watched us, paced about the floor and chatted with a few people, all while watching us. It was the strangest dining experience I’ve had and wasn’t all that pleasant. I was uncomfortable for the duration, and I won’t be back.

We went for the High Tea coupon through Living Social. The table was set up very nice and quaint with a cute tea pot set. The service was so so slow. We ordered lunch, just salads and it took forever to be served. The old man who must have been an owner sat nearby starring at us and listened in on our conversations and felt he needed to add several comments to what we were talking about. Several locals came in to chew the fat with him, as our lunch and tea service took an hour and a half. We were the only customers in there the whole afternoon. I felt like I was in Floyds Barber Shop from Mayberry with local gossip and slow service. I don’t know how they stay in business. The food is only ok. Sweets are only ok. They whole experience was odd. I won’t go back.

I had a Groupon and invited several friends to meet after Christmas for tea. The Shop is quaint. The food is good. While service is a bit slow, we didn’t mind at all since it gave all of us the opportunity to catch up on each other lives. Our lunches were all good, and the portions were just enough. The tea selections were quite extensive. The table settings were adorable.
The dessert selections were quite good, and most of my friends bought something in the Shop. The selection of beautiful table runners were wonderful.
My friends came from Downers Grove, Naperville, Gurnee, and London to meet up at this adorable tea shop. We had such a good time that we’ve decided to make this an annual event.
Not sure why this Shop gets bad reviews.
If you are looking for a High Tea that is served at The Drake, this place isn’t for you. But if you are looking for a cozy, warm shop in the middle of a small quaint town, then Gourmet Junction is the right fit for you.

I was really excited to try Gourmet Junction because I love high tea. There was a Groupon, for tea for two for $ 29.00. I made the reservation and brought a friend. When we got to Gourmet Junction, we saw that it was located in downtown Plainfield, which is really cute. The shop itself was quaint and I was looking forward to tea. When we sat down, it took awhile for the server to come over, and when she did, she said, «This tea service is sweets only, so if you want to order food, here’s a menu.» For $ 29, I would have expected more than sweets, but I thought that if the sweets were amazing, it would be worth it. I was very disappointed when the plate of sweets were brought over. Grocery store cookies and grocery store cupcakes were on the plate. I know they were from Meijer grocery store, because I had bought the exact same cookies a few weeks prior. The tea was served in a nice china set, and there was a nice array of bagged tea to choose from, but if I’m going out and paying $ 29.00 for a tea service, I expect homemade treats and tea sandwiches.

Lose the champagne mustard in favor of spicy mustard, and you’ve got a pretty good sandwich on a pretzel bun from this place. Pretty tasty pasta salad to boot.