Earlier today during my lunch hour I walked up to Chinatown just for a change of scenery. My last few lunch hours have really just involved a short walk to the food place of choice and an equally short walk back to the office. Nope. Not today. Actually, I was in the mood for some Chinese loose leaf tea. The only thing that’s stopped me from having that kind of tea in the office was the fact that I didn’t have a teapot. I tried just dumping the loose tea in my mug. It kind of works out but you have to put in some extra work to make sure that you don’t end up chewing on tea leaves or getting them stuck in your teeth. Anyway, being so close to Chinatown I wondered why I didn’t get a pot earlier. They’re really in abundance. I got mine over at Tap Phong Trading Co. (360 Spadina Ave. between St. Andrew and Baldwin). Doesn’t everyone know about this place? Go inside and they have aisles and aisles of inexpensive housewares. I got my 700 mL teapot (or was it the 1050 mL one? I forgot) for $8.99 plus tax. Not bad at all considering the pot looks fantastic.
Anyway. After getting my pot I went to Ten Ren and got a canister of aged Pu-Erh tea. It’s pretty common at dim sum places. Every time my friends have ordered it I enjoyed drinking it so I wanted some of my own. I suspect I could have gotten some more inexpensive stuff, but I just got one of those $28 canisters like the last one I got at the store.
Pu-erh seems to be a class of tea on its own. It’s not green, it’s kind of not black, and not in between like oolong (funny name). It’s actually darker than black tea. No kidding. When you brew a pot you get a really dark brown tea. It smells pretty strong and is really earthy. The first time I drank it I joked that it felt like I was drinking liquid soil. That’s not true though, I guess. I mean, the tea isn’t thick or clouded at all. The mouth feel was just new for me. After drinking some more I was hooked; it’s kind of mellow and nice. I’ve been drinking it all afternoon. What I didn’t realize is that this tea seems to have a higher caffeine content than an average tea. So at this moment I’m a little bit buzzed. Coming home on the train I was kind of reminded of the time a few weeks ago I had a large coffee at Timothy’s which resulted in me being nauseous on the train. In this case, I was unable to close my eyes on the train–every time I did my eyes would go twitchy and I’d have to open them.
Anyway, now that I have a pot at work, I should carry in a few zipper bags of some of the ti kuan yin and pu-erh teas I have here at home. That way whenever I get a craving for something special I’ll just whip out my pot and tea leaves and brew something good to make my colleagues jealous.
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