A lot of the popular dishes here sell out early, so British-born owner Anita Maynard suggests that visitors arrive early before her popular freshly-baked sweets, sausage rolls, bangers and mash, and fried North Atlantic cod and fresh-cut chips sell out.

For three years Maynard ran a tea room in this location, complete with imported Blue Willow china and unlimited pots of tea. But she closed that part of the Pantry last December.

“It was extremely popular,” she sighed. “Too popular. We only had nine tables and could seat 36 people. As it became more well-known, we had long waits for a table and some of the customers got nasty with our staff.”

The last straw was the haughty lady who didn’t want to wait another minute while the customers at another table were lingering over their pot of tea.

“Could you please ask those ladies to leave?” she asked the waitress. The server told the huffy woman that it wasn’t the tea room’s policy to ask patrons to leave. “Well,” announced the woman, pushing herself into the tea room, “then I will.”

That’s when Maynard decided to change her concept and offer many of the same dishes, but from a carry-out menu.

“Leavenworth has several nice parks, and people take their meals there and have a picnic,” Maynard said. “Just a few blocks over from our shop is Riverside Community Park, which is really a pleasant place to sit and eat and, perhaps, go to the Carousel Museum afterwards. There are also benches and grassy areas overlooking the river on Esplanade Drive.”

It was raining on the afternoon that I stopped into the shop, so I got a nice thick wedge of Maynard’s home-baked orange cream cheesecake to take home with me. It was so extraordinarily delicious, I felt like royalty eating it. Next time I grab some food to go from the Queen’s Pantry, I’ll bring along a tiara.