tasting three different Chinese #teas with dim sum in Suzhou.
Yesterday we went to a popular and reputable Cantonese style dim sum place in Suzhou and took a chance on their tea menu which yielded pleasantly surprising results! While nicer restaurants always have a tea menu, the quality and ability to prepare it well is very spotty, can be very overpriced, and is basically like rolling the dice here in China. Yes that is weird, because we are in the land and origin of tea itself, China, but the story of quality, consistency, trust and responsibility in food consumables in China is a whole other blog I’m not going to start with this post.
Anyways, I was in a good mood, and since we were so close to famous tea growing regions (Suzhou being one for 碧螺春 biluochun), southern Chinese are more knowledgeable and acquainted with tea than their northern counterparts in general, fresh spring harvest teas should have flooded the market by this point, I was feeling adventurous and ready to roll the dice.
The tea menu was reasonable enough—tightly edited selection of “greatest hits” of Chinese teas at fair prices. It oddly did not have any locally grown selections (glaring omission: 碧螺春 biluochun) butit did quite predictably reflect the tea tastes of Cantonese tea drinkers which made sense since we were at a Cantonese style dim sum restaurant.
We ordered three different teas by the cup, which each came in its own gaiwan and had a dedicated tea server (separate from the normal waitstaff) to brew and decant it for you. It was a brilliantly simple set up which nicely reflected some basic respect for tea drinking. The tea itself was better than we expected and I can’t wait till more food establishments outside of China start using this tea service model as the norm to provide some decent tea with good food.
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