A few months ago, July to be exact, I wrote about the opening of a tea house called The Tea Room in Newport Beach, which opened with a blitzkrieg of coupons from websites like Groupon and Amazon Local. We even bought one.
Then, a few weeks ago, we decided to try to cash it in. I called to make a reservation, and after listening to a pleasant recording saying to leave a message, I did, stating when we wanted to come and repeating my phone number at least twice. On the day of our reservation, when we realized hadn't gotten a callback to confirm, I called again. This time the Brit whose voice I heard earlier on the machine picked up. She said that they were completely booked, but she offered a reservation for a few weeks out. We took it.
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When that day came, we called again not to confirm, but to ask for directions. The machine answered. It was that Brit-accented voice again and it said that The Tea Room was closed until further notice.
The website (which I noted earlier is a cleverly called 50shadesofearlgrey.com) hints of nothing of the closure, but The Tea Room's Yelp listing is full of similar reports.
Our refund from Amazon Local is still forthcoming.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.