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.”