Above a burger place, brassy swing tunes filled a private room located behind a vault door and up an old staircase, left over from when the building was a bank.

Along the bar, in front of the booze, sat a line of orange ceramic teapots and jars of dark leaves.

“This is from the highest-altitude tea garden in north India,” said Amy Dubin, 44, as she grabbed one of the jars from the bar to show a group of men in golf shirts and button-downs. “These are handpicked leaves.” Tea is different every year and every season, she explained.

“It smells delicious! Look at the color!” said Alex Chan, a teacher from Queens “in his 40s” and a member of the New York Tea Society, which meets here on a semiregular basis.

By night, this parlor, Victorian in décor with gold wallpaper, purple velvet benches and a stately little library, is Garfunkel’s, a speakeasy-style cocktail lounge at 67 Clinton Street on the Lower East Side. By day, it is the home of Janam Tea, which is run by Ms. Dubin and offers a proper tea service with cucumber sandwiches, scones, clotted cream and unlimited tea.