Ugly, ain’t they?
When I am paying damn good money for something hot and wet, in a cafe which has 15 different ways that one can have one’s coffee, you better believe that I expect you to make up a pot of tea using loose leaves, not just a teabag. You are not a greasy spoon diner, mmkay?
Do cafes feel that teapots don’t go with their postmodern decor? The pots don’t have to look like refugees from a British etiquette primer or a country living guide
they can be just as chromed and glassed as one desires and still make proper tea, and with the advantages of built-in infusers so that there’s no need for strainers at the table.
I know there’s been a few other ranters out there who share my disdain for teabags when out. If it’s the local hamburger joint that dishes up instant coffee for the other caffeine fix that’s one thing – one just gets on with wetting one’s whistle. But if it’s a cafe or restaurant with a gleaming chrome coffee machine worth thousands of dollars, full of baristas who would spit at the mention of instant coffee as an insult to their training in extracting the perfect essence of coffee beans, how dare they treat those of us who sometimes prefer a cup of tea with any less respect in the preparation of our beverage?
So, who has a cafe to recommend that does actually go to the immense bother of using looseleaf tea? Doesn’t matter where – even if I never get to it another reader might well thank you for the knowledge.
Tangential Geek Credit: The Utah Teapot
Careful what you wish for. You might end up with places that rip open tea bags and empty them into pots of boiling water…
F-cking ‘ey, dude. I can’t tell you how said it makes me when one of those tiny steel teapot jobbies comes out, with the sad string of a tea-bag throttling its lid.
I feel like, “Why bother with this grim charade of putting a tea, in a tea pot? Why don’t they just do away with pretence and chuck it in a mug with some scotch fingers (not to belittle scotch fingers, but there’s a time and a place, and a $4.50 cup of tea ain’t it).
I have several favourite cafes, based _solely_ on the fact they use leaf tea.
Or evn worse, a certain coffee chain that charges more for a large tea when the only difference is extra hot water for the same tea bag.
It’s not just the teabag that enrages me, but the paltry amount of water that goes with it – once you remove the teabag, there’s about four mouthfuls of liquid left if you’re lucky.
The way a cafe presents its tea is my measuring stick. Since I had to give up coffee a few years ago for health reasons I’ve become a bit of a pain the arse about tea preparation.
I only got to cafes in my area (Byron) which serve good leaf teas — in Byron itself it’s Bay Leaf Cafe in Marvell Street. Best breakfast inn BB too. No attitude, great coffee (sadly vicarious for me) and a little off the tourist track.
I know it’s pathetic, but I actually carry around little containers of my own blends so that when we visit unfamiliar cafes I can just say it’s special tea and ask for a teapot with hot water.
Hey, I thought we were all latte-sippers here.
I propose a campaign to bring the Non-Ts to heel. We carry our own teapots, & tea. We sit decorously at their best table, & order hot water. H-O-T water. We make our tea. I shall happily pay for milk, the use of a cup (as long as it is NOT chipped) & for the service component of providing hot water. But I shall NOT PAY FOR ANOTHER FUCKING TEABAG.
Ireland, before the advent of the cafe. If you wanted a decent coffee it was Bewley’s, in Grafton Street in Dublin, or instant.
But the message tricled out to the provinces. I encountered a chap in Kinsale who was proud to offer his customers ‘real’ coffee – in a plunger, or caffetiere as they insist on calling. Being brave, and desperate, I took him up on the offer. And when it arrived it was – you guessed it – instant coffee, served up in a plunger.
And so I’m not too far off thread: I became a coffee drinker after encountering the swill passed off as tea in England.
My better half has exactly your gripe. He even uses an infuser at home and yours truly seems to be the only one who ever empties the rotten, irritating little thing. So I went for him with my expensive new stainless steel coffee percolator and now have some revenge…
Why don’t you just give up doing the endless rounds of disappointing cafes with their sordid tea bags, soggy/stale-Miss-Havisham cakes and yes – lousy coffee and just have it all at home? You’d save heaps of money in the process. Get yourself a proper exquisite Wedgewood tea set, some delicious scone recipes and Bob’s your uncle.
However if you must keep hunting for that cafe served cuppa, maybe you should get together and form a tea-leaf only tea club and agitate for genuine tea. Offenders should be named and shamed and over time you may effect a change involving more respect for tea-lovers. Actually there are places in Sydney for genuine tea-leaf afficionadoes. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald/Good Living listed a couple of cafes in Darlinghurst – one I think called the ‘Victoria tea rooms’???. There is one in I think ‘The Glasshouse’ building in the CBD which I stumbled across which has loads of different teas in old-fashioned boxes and walls of drawers and would definitely rather die than serve tea-bag tea. My better half and I have also come across at least two cafes in Newton that serve real tea and they were quite innocuous-looking places and not too harsh on the budget. That’s all I can think of right now. Hope this helps….
(NSFW!)
Hmm … I should never have Googled ‘teabag’!
I don’t know. Those wet teabags aren’t so ugly. There’s a nice pearly diaphanousness to the paper, and that tea-stain colour is one of my very favourite shades.
When you pay three or four dollars for tea in a cafe, I agree, it should be decent loose leaf tea properly made and served in a pot so you can pour it to your own desired strength. But at home and at work, I’m addicted to Aldi brand Earl Grey teabags: $1.99 for 50, but it’s the taste I am fond of not the bonus extreme cheapness. No doubt the contents of the little paper bags is mostly sweepings and leavings from the scungiest plantations, and the bergamot is probably soaked in glen 20 air freshener or something…. but I like it.
I want to know why the good china is out!
My Granma never would have allowed it. Unless the friggin Queen was coming round.
I personally think China Cabinets, untouched by hand or time, are one of the most curious things about pre-war Australia, and Australians.
Im a bit of a fan actually. Love a good China cabinet.
In the Sydney medical lab where I worked in the 60s, we made our tea in a 2 litre glass Florence flask. Billy Tea (the brand) was the tea of choice those days, and we measured the leaf by the palmful. While any of the staff was free to make the tea, Harry, our lab orderly, was the arbitrator and woe betide anyone whose brew didn’t measure up to his high standard. Nowadays my choice is Queensland Nerada leaf tea (not a bad drop!) and my affectation is drinking it from a huge 65-year old Corning handleless mug retrieved from a sunken wartime shipwreck in the Solomon Islands.
Tampon tea is a hideous sight. Beware the proliferation of the ground coffee bag.
And what is it with the Yanks and coffee? Why do they imagine that watery caffeinated black piss they’re swilling in huge doses – qualifies under the heading “coffee”?
Starbucks is a classic example of imperial overreach. They just dont seem to get that they are invariably serving the worst dogsbrew in town, as soon as they leave home shores.
See the empty seats in London, Sydney, Copenhagen and marvel at the lack of insight, and due diligence.
Merlo at my uni do good tea. Loose leaf Elmstock (West-Australian company) tea of more than one kind. English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Ceylon Pekoe. The correct answer to “Where do I get a good cup of tea?” of course is home.
If you’re in the northern suburbs of Brisbane, Queenies’ Traditional Teahouse (in Ascot) does a smashing pot of tea. 80 to choose from, loose leaf without leaving the leaves in the pot; the pot itself hold about 2.5 cups, too.
You mean sort of like a dress Stevie Nicks wears when performing…
I hardly ever drink tea while out but the following certainly make proper tea in Armidale.
Courthouse Coffee Shop
Caffiends
and, I think,
Rumours on the Mall.
At Smoko in West End, the proprieter boils water in a billy, throws a handful of leaves in at the right moment, and swings the billy in a vertical circle, to sink the leaves, all proper like. Proffered drinking vessel is a large thick china mug, as used to be standard issue in factory canteens.
I had a loverly proper cuppa at Readings Hawthorn last week. 3 cups worth too.
A good quality FRESH teabag can make a reasonable cup of tea. Say Twinings in the sealed foil enclosure. But it must be an airtight seal. Teabags go off after about a day exposed to the atmosphere.
My Lapsang Souchong keeps well that way and can provide the synapse triggers to simulate memories of a good strong White Ox. (not really but I can hope)
I do strenuously object to being charged $3 for a cup of hot water with a generic stale teabag floating in it.
Unlike bonyton I can neither afford to buy my books nor take my tea at Readings in Hawthorn.
(- then you’ve never seen the bargain table, FX,
which is where I do all my Readings browsin’. They have books and papers (loose leaves) in the caf too)
Oh precious’ — right up my alley. Only loose leaf tea gets served in my caff and free top ups of hot water when required. Irish, English, Russian Caravan, and P.O.W. No strainers unfortunately. (Sieve it through your teeth.).
Good quality loose leaf tea is getting harder and harder to source. Sadly Bushells, Billy, and Lanchoo are looking dustier and dustier.
Oh, almost forgot the Early Grey (Lord Mould as I like to call it,) which is very nice blended with E.B. (1:3). A slice of ginger or a cinnammon stick thrown into the pot also makes for a refreshing cuppa.
Have worked into two ‘Five star” joints, and they both used teabags.
It’s worth pointing out that there’s nothing like a good cup of hot Indian Chai. None of this sugary syrup crap you get at Starbucks and Gloria Jeans; a good cup of Chai is choc full of spices, ginger, pepper and a few drops of honey. I don’t do mine on the stove, but I do brew it in milk. Warms the cockles of yer ‘eart.
Billy or Sunshine milk tin. Bring water to boil, throw in a cupped hand of Billy or Lan Choo just as the water comes to the boil, remove from heat, tap gently on the side of the Billy to settle the leaves, give top half to somebody else and drink bottom half yourself. Bliss.
At last, an issue where lefties and righties share common ground.
I’ll add to my grouse in that thread about Earl Grey. This stuff should be treated like radioactive waste and held in sealed drums away from any other tea. The one thing worse than getting a tired $3 tea bag in a cafe is getting one that’s been carelessly infused with toilet freshener.
Patrickg – How dare you!! What an absolute insult! How could you possibly come onto this website and say something so vulgar!!
No, no, no, I’m not talking about your swearing – that’s fine here! But how could you POSSIBLY say anything bad about scotch finger shortbread!! They are the best biscuit in the WORLD!! AND they would add penache to any taudry consomme of paper and floor-sweepings!
Take it back!!
I’d rather have a Glengarry if you’re going Arnotts.
I’m thinking present de-coffeenated company would mostly answer to the name “Loose Leaf Left” *, what?
What next, gang-pao-de, plot and treason?
* Surprisingly, google says the phrase is up for grabs, in that context.
Oh, quite Lefty. It’s catpiss.
And you can’t actually go in there and order a latte. Oh no. It has to be a ‘Morroccan Dogbrew Flatulent Au Lait’
Good lord, you people drink tea in a cafe? That stuff should be left for the visit to grandmas.
From memory, Cafe Essen in Canberra (it is in Civic) uses loose leaf tea in pots. They even have a fairly large variety of teas from which you can choose. Its actually one of my favourite cafes in Canberra.
Yes CK, and do you want that Astrakhan black donkey pish in monster size, SUV, or Enormograd?
I usually check out the size of the teapot and whether the menu specifically says ‘teapot’ as in ‘pot of tea’. I’ve given in on the teabag over time only now adding the proviso ‘make it strong’ in the hope that they might chuck in a second bag.
Actually now I think about it this has become a moving ‘feast’ for me and I now pack a thermos and my own compromise teabags just to ensure I get enough whack from my morning cuppa. Packing you own hot water also saves you the horror of hot water charges – $2 is my tops so far.
A dear friend of mine recently brought me back some BOPF tea from the Cameron Highlands. It’s heavenly stuff.
Starbucks seems to do quite well with the yoof, but they aren’t expected to know any better. Doesn’t really offend me, as long as a decent cafe is nearby.
The thing that gets me is the upsizing of coffees in the chain cafes recently – WTF happened to a 250ml glass? These days that’s the weirdos drink size, you’ve got to get the 375ml of warm milk, or the 600 ml if you really need your dose of animal fats.
Orwell was the ultimate tea aficionado. In fact he applied a stringent 11 point criteria.
Ugh! How can anyone possibly drink Earl Grey tea????????? Infused with that sickly insipid Bergamot as it is – I don’t care if it’s Twinings. However the same cannot be said for Twinings English Breakfast Tea, which is a great staple. But by far the best is their Darjeeling Tea but alas! I cannot find it in loose leaf form anywhere and it tastes as weak as in a tea bag.
Another great tea is Madura, which has the added bonus of being Australian…
Anyway LeftyE, why not bring out the good china? Great-Grandma died years ago and now we happily raid the old rosewood glass cabinet whenever we like. It’s a generational social paradigm shift kind of thing.
P.S: Wanna tip for some light, fluffy scones? It’s all in the wrist action – rub the butter in the flour so well so well you can almost sift it again, and DO NOT knead the dough for longer than half a minute!