Walking through the door at Bawdsey Manor, it doesn’t take long for me to feel right at home. And that’s not all too common in Texas. Home, for me, is 5,000 miles away in an English village that looks as if it was plucked straight from a postcard. Imagine thatched cottages and red telephone booths. Stonehenge is a 15-minute drive from my front door. Texas is about as far away from home as an English girl can get.

But when I arrive at this cozy cottage tearoom in Bracken Village to meet fellow Brit Vicki Seder, who runs Bawdsey Manor with her sister, Christine Thomas, something feels familiar. It isn’t the china patterns, the Cadbury chocolate, or the clippings of royal faces from British newspapers covering the walls. It isn’t even the scent of fish and chips drifting from the kitchen. It’s the question I’m asked as I enter: “What about a cup of tea?”

Taking tea might be the true test of Britishness. Vicki’s preferred brand is PG Tips, a staple of grocery-store shelves back home. Vicki and Christine have been pouring a good cup since they opened 16 years ago.

English Hospitality
“I came here for a holiday,” Vicki recalls of how she moved across an ocean and opened a tearoom. A vacation to visit Christine, who had married an American, turned into a longer stay than she had anticipated. “I just loved it. I’ve been here for a long time. It feels like home,” Vicki says.

Bawdsey Manor, named after an 1800s estate on the east coast of England that the sisters visited as children, began as a small antiques store.

“People would come and chat,” Christine recalls about the early days. “Vicki would make tea for them, and then perhaps she would make them a sandwich. Before we knew it, we were running a restaurant. We never really planned it that way.”

Comfort Food
Texas has tweaked only slightly the sisters’ distinct London accents. Vowels are longer. American phrases have leaked in. But when it comes to food, Vicki admits that her tastes have hardly changed.

“It’s what you were raised with, really,” she says. “When you have an English dinner, you feel like you’ve had a real dinner.”

Britain rules this menu, with culinary traditions such as shepherd’s pie (steaming spheres of cheese-and-gravy-drizzled mashed potatoes), fish and chips (with fat, British pub-style fries), finger sandwiches, and the traditional high tea complete with tiered platters and decorative china. “Our stuff is strictly English,” says Vicki. “It’s just a different flavor.”

The food is not the only authentic touch. Every quaint detail, from the freshly pressed, crisp tablecloths to the background music, transports Texans and homesick British visitors to a tearoom in the English countryside. As I sip my tea, the songs that my grandmother used to hum while she cooked Sunday lunch float around the room. Vera Lynn is singing “The White Cliffs of Dover.”

Home Sweet Home
When I ask Vicki and Christine if they miss London, both assure me that America is now home. Both married Americans and feel welcome in their San Antonio community.

“People embraced us,” Vicki tells me. “We have really neat customers. In our last place we were flooded out. We had 15 inches of water. All our customers showed up with trailers to haul off everything. In England they would have said, ‘Get on with it, mate. Let us know when you’re open again.’ Here they came with mops and buckets. People here are so lovely.”

Splitting Scones
Perhaps the true test of an English tearoom is the scones. “People ask what flavor scones we do,” Vicki says with a laugh. “We don’t! We just do a Devonshire split scone.”

Even in England, plenty of would-be tearooms fail to perform when it comes to the perfect split scone, which should easily break down the middle so you can slather each half with strawberry jam and thick cream. “It took us forever,” says Vicki. “Trying to get scones to work in this heat is not easy, and trying to get them to split is very tough.” They sell approximately 150 of these little baked treats every day.

I eagerly await that first bite. The scone is a perfect warm mix of firm-but-cakey texture and sweet-but-tangy taste. It’s easy to forget my manners as I lick the cream from my fingers and wash down each bite with a gulp of PG Tips tea. Texas suddenly doesn’t feel so very far from home.

Bawdsey Manor: 18771 FM 2252 (Nacogdoches Road), San Antonio, TX 78266; www.bawdseymanor.com or (210) 651-7500.

A NOTE TO OUR READERS
"Tea at Bawdsey Manor" is from the May 2008 issue of Texas Living: People & Places, a special section of Southern Living for our subscribers in Texas.