tea with sweet potato!

Yesterday I finally got to go to the Ten Ren Tea House for tea and snacks. I'd been hanging for a visit since I found out they did fake meat.

This stylish little place on Swanston St (146, btw Bourke and Collins) has such an extensive tea list it was making us feel like dumb honkies. What to choose? I resisted Kumquat, though I love the fanta-orange colour. Considered date and chrysanthenum for our health. But went for Sweet Potato Tea Milk tea with Pearl because I couldn't resist. Yes there were pieces of sweet potato in our tea! And in warm tea the sago pearls go delightfully gooey in just the slightest of ways. Good tea.

The food was crazy. And you know I love my crazy food but this was almost crazy in the wrong way. We had vegetarian green tea noodles and vegetarian lemon fish. The noodles were a lovely green colour but covered in a fairly disturbing sauce. It was kind of a vegetarian bolognaise - bits of fake mince and vegies. I think in a skip place I would have rejected it outright but somehow in this context it mostly just amused me. The fish was pretty good - two big chunks of tender fillet with a bit of sauce. This was served with rice and then three little side dishes. Oddly one of the sides was scrambled eggs with tomato.

Yeah, so I'm excited about the potential of tea house. I want to try the tea jellies and I want to try more of the different teas. You get complimentary green tea cookies with a pot of tea. So take me on a tea date?

Meanwhile on the interweb I discovered the lovely Emmy over at Fangrrrl . Lots of music writing. This post about the passing of Sleater-Kinney is amazing. It really made me feel the big hole they're leaving. I almost got teary at work. But then, in the context of today that's not that surprising.