Drink Me! Tea Room

Drink Me! Tea Room runs a traditional afternoon tea service from a small unit on Warner Road in south Tempe, open Thursday to Sunday from 11am to 5pm and closed the other three days. Reservations are required rather than merely encouraged: the room is small, and the format — full tea service with tiered stands, brought to the table in courses — does not lend itself to dropping in. There is a retail side as well, with loose-leaf teas and treats sold to take away, so a visit can be a purchase rather than a sitting.

For a non-drinker the appeal is structural rather than a matter of menu detail. This is an entire venue whose core offering is tea, operating in the middle of the day, at hours when almost every other social option in the metro is a bar. Nobody has to explain themselves, and nobody is holding a drink you are not. Alongside the loose-leaf service the kitchen makes a short list of named mocktails — the Two Days Slow and the Jack of Hearts among them — and DiningOut Phoenix picked the room out in its May 2026 guide to the best places in metro Phoenix for a mocktail.

One correction belongs here plainly, because the format invites exactly the wrong assumption. This is not an alcohol-free venue. The tea room's own materials advertise "special-tea cocktails" alongside the tea service, so alcohol is poured. It earns its listing on a genuine named non-alcoholic drinks list and a daytime format that suits people who are not drinking — not because the room is dry. The short week and the 5pm close are the other things to plan around: this is an afternoon, booked in advance, not a place to end up.