The Willow Tea Rooms.

The Willow Tea Rooms

This is the Buchanan Street business Anne Mulhern founded in 1983 and expanded to number 97 in 1997, and its rooms recreate Kate Cranston's Ingram Street tea rooms, the White Room on the first floor and the Chinese Blue Room above it.

Why go

The name confuses people, so start there. Mackintosh designed Cranston's 1903 tea rooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street; Celia Sinclair bought that building in 2014 to stop a forced sale and restored it, and it now trades as Mackintosh at the Willow, because the Willow Tearooms name stayed with Mulhern. What sits at 97 Buchanan Street is her business, working from Mackintosh's Ingram Street interiors rather than his Willow ones. The baking is done in house and the afternoon tea is built on Scottish produce, per the operator, Princes Restaurant Group. There is a Mackintosh gift shop attached, which tells you who the room is for.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the afternoon tea, and work the loose leaf list, which Time Out counted at over 25 varieties. Jeff's whole note on this place is Excellent tea.3
• Avoid: coming here expecting the Mackintosh original. If that is the goal, walk to 217 Sauchiehall Street instead, which is a different business with its own entry.

What locals & experts say

• The List: the tea round-up puts it exactly right, Mackintosh-inspired interiors at Buchanan Street and the tea room in the Watt Brothers store.4
• Time Out Glasgow: counts over 25 varieties of loose leaf tea here, while calling the room a tea room designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which is the misattribution this entry exists to correct.3
• The venue (own site): Established 1983, and One of Glasgow's famous treasures for locals and tourists, alike, with the interiors modelled on Cranston's Ingram Street rooms.1
• Princes Restaurant Group: describes it as a historic tea room on two floors overlooking Glasgow's Buchanan Street, with an in-house bakery.2
• Insider (2019): the business went on the market at £125,000 as Anne Mulhern moved toward retirement after more than 30 years.5
• Local rec: Jeff's save, and his verdict below is about the cup, not the wallpaper.

Good to know

• Timing: daytime only, with last orders in the mid to late afternoon and doors closing around 6pm. Go for breakfast or an early lunch if you want a table without a wait.
• Booking: book ahead for afternoon tea and for groups.
• Second room: the same business runs a tea room at 120 Princes Street in Edinburgh, so a search result may not be the Glasgow one.
• Not to be confused with: Mackintosh at the Willow, 217 Sauchiehall Street, the restored 1903 building. Separate business, separate owner, separate entry.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Excellent tea."

Verdict

could-visit — If it is on your way, and Buchanan Street usually is. This is a careful recreation of Kate Cranston's Ingram Street rooms, the White Room and the Chinese Blue Room, run as a tea room since 1983 with the baking done in house and an afternoon tea built on Scottish produce. Jeff's note is two words and they are about the tea, which is the right reason to sit down here. It does not rank higher because the architecture is a reproduction, the original Mackintosh interior is a ten-minute walk away, and no critic has tested the kitchen recently.