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Even chocoholics can enjoy high tea...but only on Valentine's Day

By M.V. Moorhead

Valentine’s Day is a time for love, it’s a time for romance, it’s a time for poetry, it’s a time for long gazes into the eyes of someone special.

But most importantly, Valentine’s Day is a day for chocolate.

There’s even some science to back this up. Chocolate is said to increase the body’s level of dopamine, which in turn stimulates your brain’s production of oxytocin, known variously “the cuddle chemical” or “the Hormone of Love”—in other words, the stuff that, when you’re around  a wild thing, makes your heart sing.

This is why, it’s claimed, so many people crave chocolate when they get their hearts broken.

Ah, but this isn’t the season to discuss getting your heart broken. It’s a time to celebrate love—and chocolate—and you can do both at a Valentine’s Day Tea at Abbey Gardens Tea Parlour and Gift Shoppe, 1837 W. Guadalupe Road (just each of Dobson in the Pavilions Center).

The boutique, stuffed from floor to ceiling with elegant and charming gifts of every imaginable variety, from figurines to hats to stuffed animals to ornaments to candles, also serves high tea in the classic manner every day that it’s open—that is, Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. (store hours are Monday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.).

But on Friday, Feb. 14, and  Saturday, Feb. 15, Abbey Gardens takes tea to a new level of indulgence.

“Everything we offer for Valentine’s Day is chocolate,” says Hallie Adams, the  shop’s proprietor. “We have a white chocolate chip scone, and then the sweets are chocolate—an assortment of sweets, like a tort and a cookie. It’s a chocolate Valentine’s Day—except our sandwiches, of course, are not chocolate.”

There will be two varieties of sandwiches available at the tea, as well as a “savory” of some sort. But apart from these delicacies, nothing else on the bill of fare will escape the chocolate theme: “We also serve chocolate tea,” says Adams. Asked how this magical-sounding concoction is created, she simply says, “You use the basic tea, and you add a little chocolate flavoring. It’s very good.”

The event will also include a sweet musical treat: Light opera selections by mezzo-soprano Sara Binette, of Arizona Opera.

Although Abbey Gardens caters principally to the ladies, tea is open to everyone.

“It’s a time for the ones you care about,” says Adams. “It can be husband and wife, mother and daughter, sisters, friends.”

There will be two seatings each of the two days, one at 11 a.m.; another at 2 p.m. Reservations are required. For details call (480) 730-4828.

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