East/West Tea Tour: Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse

On my trip across the country, I stopped mostly at smaller tea businesses filled with charm and community. My visit to Boulder included a larger, glossier tea house with the potential unrealized for greatness on an international scale. Excerpt from the review:

After visiting Seven Cups in Denver, my husband Marko and I drove to the famed Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse in Boulder, Colo. I had read rave reviews of it, and I do not disagree with them. However, Dushanbe wasn’t what I expected. While I would recommend it to others, I doubt I will return.

I can sum it up this way: People are sometimes surprised that the World Tea Expo is in Las Vegas. They say, “Vegas isn’t a tea town,” but they mean, “Vegas seems too glitzy and hollow to capture how I feel tea should be.” Boulder feels more like a tea town, but if there is ever a tea house on the Vegas Strip, it will be something like the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse.


This was a rather controversial review. Personally, I think it was balanced and that the tea industry is grown enough to handle reviews that do more than pat backs, but, hey, to each his own! Read more on World Tea News.

East/West Tea Tour: Seven Cups

My cross-country tea tour continues with a trip to Seven Cups Denver! Excerpt:

Walking toward Seven Cups, my husband Marko and I noticed that the Platte Park district where it is located had some of the traits that had attracted us to Portland and started our cross-country move and tea tour in the first place: smiling pedestrians, cute shops and restaurants, a moderately high population density, alternative medicine practitioners’ offices and the like. Tea house owners often say neighborhood characteristics like these contribute to their success, and Seven Cups indeed appeared to be the kind of business that thrives on the foot traffic these neighborhoods encourage.


This was a lovely stop on our way to Portland. If you're in the area, I recommend checking it out! If not, you can still read more on World Tea News. Up next: Boulder, CO.

East/West Tea Tour: House of Cha

Part two of my East/West Tea Tour is up on World Tea News. The trip may have ended, but the reviews go on! Here's an excerpt of the article on House of Cha in Lawrence, Kansas:

...
Perhaps it is this combination of college-town surroundings and international influence that resulted in the tea room’s unusual dichotomy of tea: bing cha puer cakes line the walls, shelves are filled with large Chinese-style canisters of oolong from the owner’s in-laws’ tea farm in Taiwan and Yi Xing tea ware adorns the counters, yet bubble tea is heavily featured on the menu and the store signage.

It’s rare that a tea business crosses the line between “serious” and “fun” so boldly, so I inquired about it. Freeman informed me that the claim of “the best bubble tea guaranteed” on the banner outside isn’t just ad-speak. Forget artificially flavored syrups – at House of Cha, they brew fresh tea concentrate for their boba three times a day and cook imported, raw Taiwanese tapioca pearls daily.

Even I was temped to try it (despite having sworn off bubble tea forever after a particularly terrible experience), but I opted instead for some of their directly sourced Snowy Moon Oolong (from the last picking of winter in the Chinese calendar), a bowl of house-made soup and a side of matcha-dusted pumpkin seeds.
...

It was a lovely visit. If you're ever in the area, be sure to check them out! In the meantime, you can read the full article on World Tea News.

Tea in LA

For me, tea and travel go hand in hand. I love checking out the unique tea culture in each place I visit. This July, I'm heading out to LA. To prepare, I'm looking for tea recommendations from my fellow tea lovers. So far, I have:

The Tea Garden & Tea Emporium
Leaforever in Pasadena
Bamboo Tea House in Pasadena
Palace of Tea in Beverly Hills
Tranquil Tea Lounge in Fullerton
SipTea

(Thank you for your suggestions, fellow Twitterers!!!) Do you have any suggestions to add? I'd love to hear them!

Top Ten West Coast East-Meets-West Tea Spots

Sunset Magazine's current issue includes a great list of the West Coast's top ten East-meets-West tea houses. Cool! The fantastic Teance tops the list, and some of my other favorites (Imperial Tea Court, Tao of Tea, Le Palais de Thes) also make the list. I hope to visit some more of the tea houses listed in my future trips out West. Have any of you tried them? What's your opinion?

Off to SF

Tomorrow, I'm flying out to San Francisco for about a week. It is, arguably, the best place for tea in the U.S., so I'll be doing lots of research while I'm there! I'll post as much as I can during the trip, and then add extras later. If you have anywhere to suggest I go for tea, vegetarian food, art or anything else you think I'd like, please drop me a comment and let me know!

Cha An

I recently visited Cha An with a classmate from Urasenke Chanoyu (where I'm learning the Japanese tea ceremony). Here are some photos of their fantastic tea and desserts.


Sake sorbet with black sesame crisp and sencha tea



















Wild berry sorbet with sesame crisp






















Assorted desserts


As you can probably tell, I adore Cha An's desserts. It was the first time my new friend had been there, and she enjoyed them, too. We had two kinds of sencha, both of which were delicious and paired very well with the lighter-tasting sweets. Yum! What are some of your favorite spot for tea and sweets?