10 August 2007 - Lake Agnes Teahouse, AB

The Lake Agnes Teahouse, sitting on Lake Agnes above Lake Louise, AB, is an absolutely wonderful marriage of food and place. It takes a medium-length-but-not-strenuous hike to reach it, ascending from Lake Louise and its attendant Fairmont Hotel on the valley floor, up past the smaller Mirror Lake and the falls that feed it from Lake Agnes, to finally reach Lake Agnes and the teahouse.

aforementioned falls

Once there, the teahouse itself is homey and bustling, with a (young, of course) staff that lives in a loft in the single building and comes down once a week ("for a hot shower"), attending to all of the functions of the teahouse in the interim. The tea menu is extensive - a few dozen varieties - with a few soups, sandwiches and tea-biscuits to accompany. And of course, the tea is fresh boiled from lakewater.

interior of the teahouse

We went with the Irish Breakfast (excellent), and split-pea soup. The soup was less thick than a split-pea normally is, but then, they have to bring everything in either on their backs or a horse's. The bread was fine, but the main point of the exercise was a relaxing fill-up of hot liquids and some solids as it rained outside on top of a mountain. Not bad.

Lake Agnes - note the teahouse on the far shore, opposite Big Beehive