Hettie’s Tearoom

My husband and I stumbled upon this tea room on our way from Edinburgh to Inverness. What a wonderful find! We both enjoyed a delicious drink – coffee and hot chocolate-​and a small bite for breakfast. The pastries looked and tasted amazing, and if you are a tea drinker then you will appreciate the long list of loose teas available. Service and staff were lovely!

The ladies running this charming place were all very friendly. Seemed to be filled with both locals and tourists. There’s a wide selection of teas and food for reasonable prices.
£1.50 for basic pot of tea.
£4 for «huge» slices of cake. Maybe huge for Britian, but they are average sized for us fatty American tourists like myself. That said, my expresso cake was delish!
Definitely a nice place for a shopping break.

Terrible service, terrible (and overpriced) cakes and takes an hour to log into wifi — the waiters will flip out on you if you ask any questions. Tea was okay

So this review is much overdue however an essential review as this place was amazing. Me and some friends popped in here after a hike in dire need of a cup of tea and some cakey refreshment. Boy did it deliver, the tea offered was all homemade with quirky flavours and the old traditional teas too and all loose leaf for that sophisticated feel. There was definitely something special about this. To go with my tea, I ordered a scone to share with a friend as they were huge and this came with homemade jam and butter. BEA-​U-​TI-​FUL!
Overall, the atmosphere of this quirky little place was great, it was buzzy but relaxed with an excellent friendly and brilliant service as any questions we had were answered with a smile.
Also they offer mackies ice cream when the weather is hot, with sauce and toppings for £2 we also took advantage of this the next day as it would just be rude not to.

Wowser, the portions are epic. No I mean seriously EPIC!
We were a party of 8 needing lunch, seating wasn’t a problem as we all manage to sit round one table perfectly.
I ordered a non-​alcoholic ginger beer and a portion (or maybe 2) macaroni — I swear it’s the biggest portion I’ve ever had. HUGE!!! Couldn’t finish it, felt full after half! I wasn’t the only one who was defeated by the plate full. Everyone enjoyed it and I say it was value for money too.

I’m «fair to middling» on this place.
Been here a couple of times now and on both occasions our plates were, in the main, tasty and largely portioned. Mind you, you pay for it. Cake portions are massive and the sandwiches’ are wedges served with salad but with a sorry portion of crisps. They also add their «famous» pink coleslaw. If, like me, you like sultanas in your slaw you’re sorted, otherwise :-\
Décor is a bit crap though. Garishly pink and blue and you need to like them on facebook to use their wifi. That’s fair enough I suppose, but it’s also fair enough that I un-​liked them 5 minutes later. Oh and there was a used tampon on the toilet floor :-S
All said and done though I’ll probably set foot in Hetties again, but some people say I’m just lazy

We wandered in on a drizzly day hoping for warmth and sustenance. I was totally mesmerized by the cool bright blue metallic patterned wallpaper. We ordered the soup of the day and scone combo, and got tomato and lentil soup on cute mismatched china plates. It was fantastic, but was served with a piece of bread that looked and tasted like it had come straight out of a plastic bag. The fruit scone, though, was very good. Ours were served with fruit jam and clotted cream. I’ll note that we were charged for the cream, although it wasn’t made clear that we had ordered it or that it would be an upcharge. It was tasty, though, and worth it.

I don’t normally review restaurants or other local (or non-​local) businesses and I’m sometimes a bit wary of reviews, because very negative reviews have a way of looking more like they’re about the person doing the review, rather than the place itself. You know the way really bad reviews make the reviewer look insanely grumpy? I’m not insanely grumpy. I’m a pretty level-​headed guy who wishes the best to people. So I’m going to have to work extra hard to convince you that Hettie’s Tearoom is a really, really, really rubbish café.
My wife and I were travelling up to the Highlands from Edinburgh for a weekend to celebrate our wedding anniversary. After a hard morning’s driving we decided to stop in Pitlochry for a bite to eat.
We walked the length of the main street looking for a place, and slightly against my better judgement, I agreed to go to Hettie’s. (She has a weakness for places with names like that.)
We went in. It was pretty full, and staff were racing everywhere with plates of food. They ignored us. We stood inside for a few minutes, waiting for someone to show us to a table. There were no empty tables, so fair enough, but nobody said hello or asked us if we minded waiting. In fact, nobody paid any attention to us at all. Then a couple got up from their lunch and left, paying the bill as they went. The staff said goodbye to them, and we waited for them to clear the table so we could sit at it. They didn’t. Eventually, after trying and failing to get anyone’s attention, we sat at the table.
Big mistake. After 10 minutes it became clear that nobody realised that we hadn’t been served, and that the debris still on the table wasn’t ours. We managed to flag someone down. She came back several minutes later with menus. I thought the ‘Rare Roast Beef sandwich with horseradish’ sounded good, but it took us a while to get someone to take our order.
We then waited half an hour for two sandwiches and two coffees.
My sandwich finally arrived. It was two thick slices of industrial pre-​sliced sandwich bread, one slice smeared with a thin layer of readymade horseradish sauce, and inside were two limp lettuce leaves and a single slice of grey, tasteless catering beef.
How much was I being charged for this insult to food? The best part of £7.
In Schwartz’s Hebrew Deli in Montréal, I once had their smoked meat sandwich — one of the best sandwiches in the world, a thick pile of succulent, aromatic smoked meat, held together with two small pieces of bread (basically devices for delivering the delicious meat to your mouth). It comes with fries. Schwartz’s is globally famous for its smoked meat. That sandwich costs $ 6.65 in Canadian dollars, a little over £4. I will never forget it. The staff are all surly elderly men, but at least they bring your food in time, and it tastes incredible.
I’ll never forget Hettie’s, either. After we’d forced down their rubbish food (well, by that point, we were starving) and drunk the swill that passes for their coffee, it took us another 20 minutes to get anyone’s attention so we could pay. By this point the place had thinned out, and the staff had vanished, presumably off doing something more important, like Facebook. I will never go back to Hettie’s. It’s the worst café I have ever visited in my life. In fact, I will never go back to Pitlochry, either.

a good tearoom Fast pleasant service at a busy time Well done

Generous portions. Coffee and tea pleasant. A busy café with just a single toilet you’ve been warned :-) Nothing outstanding but nothing really terrible.

Outstanding place for tea, cakes and a whole lot more. Service great and they clearly have a passion for tea, coffee and great food. Well worth a visit when in Pitlochry and worth taking a detour off the A9 for a luxury pit stop!

The good:
The people are incredibly nice.
It’s situated right on the main thoroughfare and easily accessible.
They didn’t chase us out though they were obviously trying to close.
Nice variety of teas, from basics to fancy herbals.
The place is new and I can see some potential, but needs to improve before I’d go back.
The bad:
Expensive! Way more than I’d like to spend for a cup of tea, no matter where the vanilla comes from.
They weren’t as yet taking credit cards.
The cake was stale (though was probably nice when it was fresh). We got their «signature cake», which was a sort of Neapolitan affair, that would definitely have to be shared, unless you’re a champion dessert eater.
The drink I ordered was supposed to be a latte (I think called the Little Miss Spice). Instead of something in a tall mug, they brought me a teapot full of milk and an egg timer. I was instructed to leave the pot to steep for 2 turns of the timer and it would be perfect. After about 4 turns, it still just tasted like warm milk that smelled vaguely of tea. It’s a nice concept, but it just didn’t work. The tea itself smelled nice and would probably be good if brewed strong and topped with milk (which is what I was expecting).
My boyfriend ordered hot chocolate, and was rewarded with a mug of hot milk with a bunch of chocolate chips in the bottom of the mug, and didn’t have a spoon long enough to mix it up. It annoyed me that the drinks weren’t ready to drink when they were served.