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2014-12-12
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I walked by here one day and saw the words "The Tea Academics". The design looked very similar to The Coffee Academics and I wondered ... were they the same? After a bit of research, yes, they were. The Habitu group, creator of Caffe Habitu and The Coffee Academics, famous all over Hong Kong for being the Hong Kong version of Starbucks, has started on a new concept. And that concept is tea.Tea drinking is actually getting popular in North America. When I went home to Canada a few months ago, I s
Tea drinking is actually getting popular in North America. When I went home to Canada a few months ago, I saw more and more tea cafes open as compared to coffee shops. Tea cafes (like David's Tea in Canada) that served tea like Starbucks. Even Starbucks was getting into the tea game with their Tazo and Teavana line. So, why this trend towards tea in North America, a continent that likes to drink coffee? Supposedly tea has several health benefits. And anything healthy drives people to go in that direction.
At the moment, The Tea Academics is having a soft opening. When I arrived, it was pretty quiet. There was maybe one other person there. The layout is minimalistic. Bar table at one end. Wood tables and chairs. A few sofa chairs. Soft music played in the background to give a very zen like atmosphere.
They had a soft opening menu. Unsure if this will change in the future. You could order a tea set which included food and tea.
There was also hot food and desserts that use some sort of tea to create it.
Their tea menu has a few interesting choices. Including something called Steampunk. Steampunk is a method of making coffee one cup at a time using an automated glass pipe siphon method. It creates only one cup of coffee. I had tried in London and thought it was interesting. Was it the best cup of coffee ever? Unsure but it was an interesting gadget. I was told by the waiter that they have decided to use this method to make tea. So, I ordered a genmaicha lychee tea by Steampunk method ($48).It arrived on a lovely oval wooden tray with a beautiful tea cup and saucer with a dainty biscuit. The tea was served in a beaker. The beaker made me think of when I was in university and we made our own beer in microbiology lab and we had to drink what we made from a beaker.
The tea was a transparent green color. It was delicate with a hint of lychee. The biscuit was crunchy and not too sweet to over power the delicateness of the tea.
I decided on a dessert (even though the waiter suggested I could have a croissant or a scone). But seriously, I was more interested in the dessert. I ordered a Black and White ($78). It consisted of an Earl Grey tea flavored chocolate mousse, sesame tuille, sesame sponge and yogurt espuma (which is just a fancy word for foam). Needless to say, it was beautiful to look at. Tasted good, too. There was also some chocolate crumbs as well. The Earl Grey chocolate mousse was chocolate flavored with a very faint hint of Earl Grey. It was smooth and rich. The sesame sponge was very sponge like in texture. The tuille was crunchy and so rich in sesame flavor. Mixed all together with the tart yogurt espuma, it was a great little dessert.
I hope they keep this concept. I'll be back to try the other desserts and other teas as there seemed to be other interesting blends. Some they created themselves.As they are now doing a soft opening, there is no 10% service charge. There will in the future when it does it's official opening.
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