Question of the Day - 23 May 2025

[Editor's Note: We dispatched our occasional blogger/reviewer Dapper Dave Kamsler to review Peacock Alley. He's something of a high-tea connoisseur and here's his report.]

I’d never been to the Waldorf Astoria in Vegas or its previous incarnation as the Mandarin Oriental, but my wife was joining me on this trip. She's not a gambler and usually doesn’t care for Las Vegas, but we both enjoy a nice tea service. So we tried the Peacock Alley tea room on the 21st floor at the Waldorf.

The tea service itself was excellent. The scones were fresh and hot, the sandwiches were plentiful (we couldn't come close to finishing them all), and the desserts were yummy. The servers were also very friendly and attentive.

They specify no dress code, but it's high tea and the Waldorf after all, so most people were at least somewhat dressed up. I wore a button-down shirt and khakis. A very snazzy young couple might have been doing it as a pre-prom activity. An obvious bachelorette party and a mother and two grown daughters were all gussied up, but the guy from another couple was wearing shorts and a baseball cap. It's Vegas, so whatever you'd wear to a show or a nice dinner out would be fine.

There are four seatings each day: 1, 1:15, 3, and 3:15 p.m. We went to the 3:15 seating. They give you your table for an hour and 45 minutes from your start time (in other words, no matter what time we actually arrived, we had to be out by 5 p.m.). That wasn't a problem, as we were finished well before 5 without being hurried at all. People straggled in; it wasn't packed at 3:15, but it ended up being pretty full shortly thereafter. Only one or two tables weren't filled and I believe they were reserved anyway (they must have no-showed), so advance reservations are highly recommended.

It’s $64 per person, which includes the tea, scones, finger sandwiches, and desserts — pretty standard for tea service. We needed some substitutions. I can't eat shellfish and one of the sandwich offerings was shrimp salad; they substituted an extra roast beef sandwich without a problem. Similarly, we can’t have caffeine and one of the desserts was made with espresso, so they substituted some extra macaroons and chocolate-covered strawberries. They were very gracious about the substitutions.

A cocktail menu is also available, but we weren't drinking alcohol that day.

The one thing that's noticeably missing is a gift shop. Everywhere else we've been to tea had at least a small shop selling tea, jam and honey, and souvenirs. We have a friend who also enjoys high tea and her birthday is coming up; we were surprised that there was nothing to buy for her.

We also had a slight hassle with our table. We made the reservation well in advance and at that time, the policy was first-come first-serve seating. We received a confirmation text the day before from the reservation service, re-iterating the first-come first-serve policy. When we showed up early, we were told that all the window tables were reserved! The policy had changed recently and window tables are now an upcharge of $25.

We were aggrieved, but the manager couldn’t do anything, since the window tables were all taken and it was the last seating of the day. We tried to get past it and enjoy the afternoon. Fortunately, the view from the 21st floor from the second table from the window was still pretty great. And our server surprised us with complimentary bananas foster that they’d concocted just for us to make up for the snafu. That made us feel better and was the perfect cap to the afternoon.

Overall, while I imagine it's not something that most people coming to Vegas would be interested in, if you do enjoy high tea, I very much recommend Peacock Alley. My wife and I have done high tea a half-dozen times and the Waldorf easily qualifies as one of our favorites.