The Ritz-Carlton, Boston is bringing back its afternoon tea service for the first time since the pandemic, and this time it's dressed in the pink and green of Wicked. The Wicked Good Tea, honoring Glinda and Elphaba, launches September 26 at the hotel's Avery Bar and runs weekends through November 15, timed squarely to the touring musical's return to the nearby Citizens Opera House.
According to MassLive, the hotel paused its afternoon tea tradition after the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020 and is only now reviving it, choosing to relaunch alongside Boston's fall and winter theater season. The tea runs Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the full experience lasting roughly 90 minutes to two hours. Tickets can be booked through OpenTable, per the same report.
The menu leans hard into the musical's palette and mythology. Pink and green pastries and sweet treats share the tiered tower with savory bites like an egg salad profiterole, squash tartare, scones, and chocolate-covered strawberries, MassLive reports. Guests can add craft cocktails for an extra charge, including the Wicked Good Tea itself — a matcha gin sour — and a Botanist gin cocktail made with supreme matcha, lemon, and egg white.
Where the Tea Is Served
The service takes place in Avery Bar, the hotel's lobby-level lounge, which Marriott Bonvoy Traveler describes as centered on a six-foot Murano glass and crystal chandelier and a marble fireplace, with a cocktail menu that includes ten martini variations. The tea itself is priced at $99 per adult and $49 per child under age 10, with tax and gratuity added separately.
That price point puts the Ritz-Carlton roughly in line with Boston's other five-star tea services. Per Live la Vida, the $99 tag matches the Four Seasons Hotel's champagne-and-liqueur tea experience, while sitting above independent spots like the Boston Public Library's Courtyard Tea Room at $64 and Silver Dove at $48 to $56.
A Tea Blend From Watertown
The loose-leaf teas themselves come from MEM Tea, the Watertown-based supplier described by Sip 413 as testing more than 2,000 teas a year to stock over 1,200 regional cafes, restaurants, and luxury hotels since its 1999 founding. The hotel isn't the only Boston luxury property leaning on MEM Tea this year — the historic Fairmont Copley Plaza has partnered with the company and the Courtyard Tea Room on a Tea-to-Go in-room offering running through the end of 2026, according to the Fairmont's own listing.
Timed to Wicked's Return Downtown
The tea's launch is no coincidence. Wicked returns to the Citizens Opera House from September 23 through November 15, anchoring an eight-production season that Broadway in Boston announced back in January, including The Phantom of the Opera and Death Becomes Her, as Hoodline reported earlier this year. The venue sits at 539 Washington Street, just steps from the hotel, in a 2,600-seat landmark that opened in 1928 as a Thomas Lamb-designed vaudeville movie palace, according to Finegold Alexander Architects.
The revival also lands during a milestone year for the hotel itself. The Ritz-Carlton, Boston relocated to its current Avery Street glass tower in September 2001, meaning this fall marks 25 years at that address, after the original property opened in May 1927 at Newbury and Arlington Streets — a building that now operates independently as The Newbury Boston, per HOTELSMag.com. That original hotel had its own rigid etiquette rules in its early decades, including a policy, noted by Famoushotels.org, that barred unescorted women from entering the hotel bar until 1970 — a sharp contrast to today's playful, pop-culture-driven tea service.
The hotel is under relatively new leadership as it marks the anniversary. HOTELSMag.com reports that Adam Beer, a 25-year veteran of luxury hospitality, was appointed general manager of the hotel and its residences in March. Beyond the hotel tower itself, the Ritz-Carlton brand's footprint in downtown Boston has grown this year with 166 branded condominiums inside the 51-story South Station Tower, completed in 2025, as Hoodline noted in coverage of a law firm's move there.
