The Fancy 15¢ Afternoon Tea

The Langham is celebrating the queen's jubilee with a pip-pip deal.

By Alysia Gray Painter

| Monday, May 21, 2012 | Updated 2:32 PM PDT

Langham Pasadena

The Langham Pasadena celebrates the Queen's Diamond Jubilee with a 15¢ afternoon tea on Sunday, June 10. Reservations are a must.

Remember the last hot beverage you purchased? What was it? Three bucks? Maybe four? Maybe just a dollar and a half if you were lucky?

What if you paid 15 cents for it and you had all of the cookies and sweets and sandwiches that come with a fancy teatime service? And what if you were inside one of our SoCal's swankest hotels?

It seems like a fictional scenario, and as much as we'd like to keep asking questions and using a ton of question marks, this is too interesting not to talk about asap: The Langham Pasadena is hosting its signature afternoon tea on Sunday, June 10 for the grand price of 15¢ per person.

Can we add here that it is so rare that one uses the cent symbol nowadays that we always have to go searching for it on our keyboard? C'mon. That's rare.

The tea'll be swanky, it'll have all the fripperies, and this is the reason for the low, low, low price: the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

You see, the Langham's history stretches back to London of 1865. (Feel free to collectively sigh here, Anglophiles.) The price of afternoon tea at that time was a shilling and six pence, which today equals 15¢ or so. (Oof, we had to hunt for that ol' cent symbol again; it's just so unusual to talk about anything that inexpensive today.)

It's all pretty quaint, yes? So prepare to get quainter: The Langham is requesting that you show up en chapeau -- hi, yes, we mean a hat there, we were just feeling fancy -- that is pink or has pink in it, which happens to be le hue de Langham. Yep. Still feelin' fancy.

But reservations are beyond a must for this one. So reserve now.

Oh, and if you're a royal fan? That Princess Diana exhibit that's headed for the Queen Mary is just a few weeks away.