#teaguide

If you happen to be in New York, here is a guide to some of the best tea experiences the city has to offer.

Tea Drunk

Tucked away in a side street in charming East Village, Tea Drunk is the perfect place to spend hours tasting teas from their detailed menu.

While many tea houses source their own tea, the founder of Tea Drunk, Shunan Teng goes the extra mile. Every year she spends months trekking across the tea mountains of southern China to work alongside the farmers and carefully select teas to bring back.

Shunan’s travels result in a menu filled with rare teas. Be prepared to spend a while trying to choose between all the seasonal treasures! Luckily, the staff is incredibly helpful and knowledgeable. As a bonus, you get to choose a tea pet to keep you company.

Whether the rain is pouring or the sun is shining this is the place to enjoy a great gong fu cha in good company while getting a little tea drunk.

Be sure to check out their website and Instagram for events like tea offs and poetry evenings!

Website: http://tea-drunk.com

Hangawi

Hangawi is a vegetarian Korean BBQ restaurant in Korea Town. It provides a truly wonderful experience from beginning to end. When you enter you have to take your shoes off so make sure to wear nice socks. Their tea selection is limited, but the first pick green tea from Mt. Jilee is worth stopping by for. It pairs perfectly with the food and is served in a traditional ceramic cup with extra water so you can do several infusions.

Website: http://www.hangawirestaurant.com

Ippodo

Ippodo opened it’s first store outside of Japan in 2013. It is both a tea house and a restaurant. First you enter into a small tea shop where you can choose from a carefully curated selection of Japanese teas and tea ware. You can also buy tea to go, and the staff is highly skilled so this is a must try! If I lived in New York I suspect I would spend all my money on perfectly made matcha to go.

There is a small restaurant in the second room, and upstairs you’ll find plenty of delicious vegan options. I sat downstairs and ordered a small side dish just so I could taste the superb gyokoro. They also have a great selection of sake. The staff are all very attentive. Ippodo’s website states that they fly staff from Japan to New York to give their customers a true Japanese experience. The venue is quiet, serene and provides a meditative break in the busy, urban hustle of New York.

Website: http://www.ippodo-tea.co.jp/en/shop/ny.html

Bellocq Tea Attelier

You’ll find Bellocq at a quiet corner in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. From the outside it looks like an empty storage facility, but if you look closely there is a small sign on the door indicating that you are at the right place. If you knock on the door someone will let you into the oasis that is Bellocq. The interior is exquisite, and it is worth a visit just to spend time within these walls!

Bellocq offers both blends and pure teas. When sinking into the world of tea it is easy to become somewhat of a purist, but I appreciate Bellocq’s well balanced blends that are created with the tea leaf in mind so that the subtle flavours are not overpowered.

In addition to a wide range of both rare teas and blends, you can buy books and beautiful tea ware. I fell in love with the silver and brass steepers and the gorgeous brass spoons.

Website: http://www.bellocq.com

Bibble and Sip

Another place worth stopping by is Bibble and Sip not far from Times Square. It is a café and bakery that uses tea in an inventive way in a few of their signature drinks and baked goods. I was excited to try their matcha cream puff ever since I saw this video. 

Unfortunately, the place was packed around lunch time and with a limited time frame I wasn’t able to go back. Perhaps it would be better to go there after lunch, and possibly on the weekend.  

I’ll save it for next time.

Website: http://bibbleandsip.com

This Easter, on my way from Essen to Kraków, I had a brief stop in Berlin. Time was limited, but if there was one priority I had to make, it was to visit one of Paper & Tea’s tea houses. I had been following their Instagram for some time, and was mighty impressed by their menu and visual profile. 

I went to their department in Charlottenburg and before long I found myself in deep conversation with a staff member named Carolin. Carolin told me that Paper & Tea had been founded three years earlier by James de Groiter. Raised in a tea loving family in the states, and with plenty of trips to Asia, he was disappointed by the tea options when he moved to Berlin. He decided to take matters into his own hands, and today P&T is a blossoming business with two departments and their tea served at several other cafes and restaurants. 

I had to ask though: why Paper & Tea? Carolin had obviously gotten this question before, but was happy to explain again. Whether to discuss politics, come to terms in family disagreements, or to court a potential lover, both tea and paper have long traditions as agents and vessels of communication. P&T’s goal is to show the wealth that is to find in different tea cultures and to share their knowledge and good tea experiences.

Carolin guided me through the store and told me about their different products. They focus on pure teas but also offer a selection of various fruit- and herbal blends to make their concept more accessible. In the window hung beautifully shaped paper koi fishes and the shelves were filled with pots and cups. After admiring the ceramics of a Matthias Kaiser a bit too long, I got the opportunity to try some of the rare quality teas P&T has to offer. Carolin let me choose, and we ended up with two white teas and one oolong.

The first tea to touch my lips was Silver Sindano, a Kenya grown variety of Silver Needles. This was my first time tasting white tea from Kenya, and I was not disappointed. More sweet and fruity than its cousin from China, Silver Sindano was light on the tongue and full of flavor. The tea, like its Chinese equivalent, is made purely of sun-dried buds. The next tea was actually a variety I've encountered before, but as it was some time ago I was eager to try it again. Pu Erh Bai Ya is a white Pu Erh from China. The first thing that I noticed was how beautiful the buds looked. They were larger and more fluffy than what one would usually come across. Pu Erh Bai Ya was definitely more refined than the previous one. The flavor had a touch of minerals, and notes of wood and leather. This one also had a lot of sweetness to it. Both teas were brewed gong fu cha style in glass pots. Carolin explained that this is better for the flavor when it comes to such light and delicate teas. 

The oolong, Gabacha, was brewed in a Chinese clay pot. Gabacha is known for its exceptional high level of gamma amino acid (GABA) which they say is good for your memory and nerves. This was not at any expense of the flavor, and the first cup was pure joy to taste; surprisingly light and fruity for such a dark oolong, with notes of nutmeg and cinnamon. We brewed all the teas a second time while Carolin told me more about Paper & Tea. 

They've become quite a big staff in short time. In addition to the stores in Berlin they run a web shop and do classes and events. They source most of their teas themselves, and have their own tea lab where they try out all teas before they choose which ones to sell. Apparently Zeit Magazine recently wrote a thirty page long article about Jens de Groiter, which Carolin recommended me to read. I looked it up later, but realized that my lack of German language skills was going to be too big of a barrier.

Time flew, and after an hour or so Carolin excused herself and left me to catch a meeting. I remained in the shop, drooling over an embarrassing long line of products before I pulled myself together and left the shop with a few gifts, a black tea from Korea and a tote bag with the text; You drink coffee, I drink tea my dear. True that.

Website: http://www.paperandtea.com

Instagram @paperandtea​