Just died and went to tea heaven - Monk Bodhi Dharma

Cafe Review: Monk Bodhi Dharma
Where: 202 Carlisle St, Balaclava

Wow. Just...wow. I think I've actually found a really good tea house (slash cafe) in Melbourne. Seriously THE best cup of tea I've had in a long time.

It started with a 1 and a half hour drive to Balaclava (damn you Hoddle St, are you ever not crowded?) and then a good ten minutes of searching. Monk Bodhi Dharma. It's like a little converted two room house down an alley way off Carlisle St - I don't think you'd know it was there if you weren't looking for it.

The first thing I'd like to say about Monk Bodhi Dharma is: it rocks. I don't know about you, but there are some places I walk into and I think "wow I am SO not cool enough to be here" (mostly because it's full of hipsters) but this place isn't like that. It's got an eclectic clientele - we were sat between some hipsters and and two lovely old ladies. There is a great atmosphere, everyone seems really happy and there are fantastic solid wood tables and orchids everywhere.

Secondly, I recommend turning straight to the last page of the menu. Oh sure, they have your regular english breakfast, earl grey etc selection on the second page, but the last page is where the amazing teas are. I've been to tea houses that have 200+ teas, and I had more trouble choosing tea today than I've had anywhere else.

Each tea is accompanied by its estate of origin, an almost wine review of its flavour characteristics (think along the lines of "melon flavours with a crisp after taste") and an approximate brewing time. This turns out to be very helpful because there appears to be only one kettle boiling. My friend's tea comes out a good 5 minutes before mine. But you know, I don't mind because both pots have been brewed perfectly. Brewed to the right temperature for the right time. I am almost left speechless by the care taken with this.

My friend orders the long well, while I get the jin xuan. Oh. My. God. This tea comes with subtelties. It takes me a few minutes, but finally identify plum flavours under the earthiness of my tea. My friend's comes with a sort of rosemary, almost roast lamb, scent and refreshing floral flavour. I am in absolute heaven.

We also notice that Monk Bodhi Dharma has an amazing breakfast menu, and a coffee list to rival their tea selection. I highly recommend checking out this little hide out. I'm only sorry I didn't get any photos, but hey, that's just a reason to go back again.

The Rating
Atmosphere: 5/5
Available food: 4/5
Tea range: 5/5
Tea had: 5/5
Overall: 19/20

Questing over the river - Le Bon

Cafe Review: Le Bon Continental Cake ShopWhere: 93 Acland St, St Kilda

Living on the north side of Melbourne, I don't tend to venture "over the river" very often. Well, ok, to the National Gallery and casino and southbank, but that's about as far as I go. But in honour of my mum coming all the way down from Canberra for a visit, we did a special quest down to St Kilda in search of fabled cake shops.

After a very, very long tram ride and a very confusing wander around the streets (tip of the day: no matter how confidently she says she does assuming your mother knows where the cake shops in a city she's only been to once is folly) we found Acland Street. There's a strip with about 4 or 5 european style cake shops with the most amazing window displays. It is seriously drool worthy.

I will admit we chose the cake shop entirely based on what we wanted to eat, not the tea available. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the one we chose, Le Bon, served a brand of tea I've been reading about lately called "Stash Tea". It all looked very promising, with about 12 different types of tea ranging from green or earl grey to raspberry or orange spice. We ordered a vanilla slice, a macadamia tart, and two pots of orange spice and it was all going quite well.

Ah, alas. Tea bags. I wasn't actually expecting loose leaf tea at this place so I wasn't too disappointed. Until I opened opened it. I think I've been spoiled with those lovely silk tea bags with the high quality tea (when I dare to drink them) - what we had here was the old fashioned paper filter filled with fannings. To make matters worse, while they did put bits of orange peel in to flavour the tea, they used clove flavouring instead of actual cloves. I seriously do not understand this. Stash looks like a pretty upmarket tea company, why are they using flavouring instead of actual cloves? The tea itself was weak and not very tasty, despite the delicious aroma wafting off it.

So the tea was a disappointment, especially at $4 per pot. Luckily the cakes saved the day (though the vanilla slice wasn't amazing, the macadamia tart made up for it). I suppose I was expecting more because I'd built Stash up in my head as a really good tea brand. I am prepared to give them another go because hey, maybe I just chose a dud tea?

I guess in the end this has been me judging Stash Tea and not Le Bon for providing the tea, and I think it's great they were branching out from the usual T2. But in my opinion, cakes are just supposed to with tea. I think it just makes sense, when the cakes are so beautiful, to make sure you have a tea that compliments them.

The Rating

Atmosphere: 2/5

Available food: 4/5

Tea range: 3/5

Tea had: 1/5

Overall: 10/20

Bad Tea makes KD Sad :( - Brunetti

Cafe Review: Brunetti

Where: 194-204 Faraday St, Carlton

Maybe I'm being to harsh but what a terrible tea experience. Yes, I'm well aware that Brunetti is known for its tasty tasty cakes and biscuits, but seriously. I'm of the opinion that a decent (even semi-decent) cup of tea is not that hard to make.

It starts when I order. Brunetti only stocks about 6 types of tea - this isn't a problem, I don't expect a big range in cafes (though honestly, are they're any cafes in Melbourne that don't T2? I almost feel like changing the blog name to 'T2 Review'). I order the China Jasmine. Yes, I definitely, clearly said China Jasmine. The serving girl gives me a quizzical look and puts it through.

So imagine my surprise then when I end up with a chamomile tea. And to make matters worse - it's a tea bag. I've got nothing against tea bags when there are no other options, but Brunetti is trying to pass itself off as refined and taking food seriously (am I wrong?) so why do they have tea bags?

The next lovely surprise comes when I try to pour the hot water from a very pretty metal tea pot into my cup. Disaster. It's a dripper. I end up with a small lake on my table, and my companion has to pilfer napkins from the next table to stop it flowing onto our chairs. 

Add to this a dirty teaspoon, and Brunetti has lost some major points with me. I'm so disappointed I'm not even going to put up a photo of the experience. Go for the tea and cakes, but don't stay for the drinks.

The Rating

Atmosphere: 2/5

Available food: 4/5 (Brunetti's only saving grace)

Tea range: 1/5

Tea had: 1/5

Overall: 8/20

Cookie time

Ok, I've been looking a lot at cooking with tea recently (combining my two passions, food and tea omg). I listened to a really excellent podcast the other day interviewing Robert Wemischner (the author of Cooking with tea) and he really inspired me.

So here we go, a little cooking experiment.

I made two batches of cookies. One with earl grey tea, and the other with a toffee tea I just bought (which smells DIVINE - can't wait to drink it). Still working on the recipe, but bear with me, they taste pretty good.

First off, you want to infuse the butter with tea. A lot of recipes for tea cookies suggest you crush tea and put it in to the cookies - but seriously, who wants to eat bits of tea leaf?

Infusing butter with tea

1. You will need two grams of tea per tablespoon of butter.
2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan until just melted
3. Add the tea leaves and simmer for about 5 minutes
4. Turn the heat off and leave the tea to steap. The longer the better I think
5. Now you have delicious smelling, tasty butter. I'm not sure if you can put it in the fridge and reuse it. I think it is best to use straight away.

Note that is it is best to use a really strong tea for this. Delicate flavours get lost in the butter.

Ok, now you have amazing butter infused with whatever flavour you want. You'll need about 250 g for the following recipe, so I'd say you'd need about 20g of tea.

Earl Grey Cookies with Orange, Toffee Tea Cookies

The basic cookie recipe is thus. You can use whatever flavour of tea you want, just remember they won't come out super strong.

Ingredients
150g icing sugar
250g tea infused butter
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg, lightly whisked
375g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder


Method

1. Cream icing sugar and tea infused butter in a bowl until light and creamy
2. add vanilla essence (if making earl grey cookies, add the zest of an orange here) and keep beating
3. add the egg and mix until everything is combined and glossy
4. sift flour and baking powder into the bowl, and gently combine with wet ingredients
5. turn dough onto a lightly floured surface, and roll in to a tube. Cover with cling wrap and set in the fridge for about an hour
6. cut into rounds about 2cm thick and place on a baking tray. Sprinkle with raw sugar if desired (it adds a nice crunch)
7. Bake at 180 degrees celcius for 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

Alright, there we go! I slightly overcooked mine so they were on the crunchy side, but still damn tasty (especially the toffee tea ones).

Theine

Dear Theine,

I do not accept you as a real word. 

Your close cousin, Theanine, I have no problem with. He actually appears to have a place in the world of tea.

Please stop appearing in otherwise well-written and interesting books on tea, trying to pass yourself off as your cousin. It's embarrassing for us all.

KD

For anyone who might not know, Theanine is an amino acid especially found in green tea that gives it that kind of sweet taste (check it out ), while Theine is a "tea specific" word for caffeine (What am I a talking about, of course you all know this).

Let's go for a ride - Ici

Cafe Review: Ici

Where: 359 Napier St, Fitzroy

My housemate and I decided to go on an epic bike ride for the recent public holiday - all the way from Coburg to Lake Albert and back again (alright, maybe not that epic to seasoned riders, but pretty huge for us).

Along the back alleys and sidestreets of Melbourne we came across a little corner cafe with people literally spilling on to the street. Well, that was enough to make us want to see what the fuss was about, and in we went.

Ici in Fitzroy is a popular place, and there were no free tables. After chatting to a very helpful (though very busy) waitress, we were allowed to pull up a couple of stools on the pathway outside. Getting a seat though turned out to be the easy part.

Ici stocks T2 teas, a range of about a 20 - my mind was not equipped to handle such an unexpected range of choices, and the poor waitress had to stand there for about 5 minutes while I pondered my decision. I eventually settled on a French Earl Grey (though I was tempted by a Turkish Apple based iced tea).

Service was quick and the tea was delicious - I had mine without milk (naturally). I will complain that they use Zero Japan teapots (this is a personal gripe because I think they always drip everywhere, but don't let that put you off if you have a fondness of these teapots). The first cup was a rich, clear brown like translucent chocolate, the taste just lightly tanine-y with a hint of bergamont and roses. The second cup (poured about 15 minutes later, I know waaaay too long) was too overbrewed for me, but my housemate happily drank it.

I have since been told that Ici has an excellent breakfast range to go with your morning cup of tea. I thought it was a really good little cafe, with a great vibe (though maybe this was more due to unexpectedly getting a decent cup of tea?)

The Rating

Atmosphere: 4/5

Available food: 3/5

Tea range: 4/5

Tea had: 4/5

Overall: 15/20

NB: Just in case someone gripes about me rating food I didn't have, let me just say the food LOOKED really good and I've heard good things about it. If we hadn't just had breakfast I would have happily tucked in to any one of the plates coming out.

My Water Tastes Like Cucumber- A Minor Place

Cafe review: A Minor Place

Where: 103 Albion St, Brunswick

I've been meaning to go to A Minor Place for a while, and finally got there the other day after picking my housemate up from the airport at crazy o'clock.

Alright, first things first, the positives. I love the atmosphere there. It's like a converted terrace house, very relaxed and friendly. The breakfast menu is pretty extensive and full of interesting dishes (my housemate had a bagel with avocado and dahl).

The tea range is big for a place that is better known for coffee - there are your standards like English Breakfast and Earl Grey, and a few more interesting ones like peppermint, liquorice and ginger, and a red rooibos.

I go for the gen mai cha and a piece of organic fruit toast. We also get some water which, sorry I'm going to get hung up on this, has cucumber in it. I can get behind lemon or whatever in my water, but cucumber? I don't want my water tasting like cucumber.

The drinks come out. Bonus - they use tea leaves. Hoorah! And the tea pot is very cute in a bubble kind of way. But the tea pot is dirty with tanine staining all up the spout. Mmm, nice.

The tea is a lovely pale honey colour when I pour it and has that good roasted rice smell. Alright, all going well. Then I drink it. You know when you cook rice on the stove and it goes crusty and brown around the edges? Yeah, that's what it tastes like. Over cooked, crusty rice.

At least the fruit toast was nice. But overall, not the best tea experience, and I just couldn't get over my weird tasting water. I'd recommend going for coffee and breakfast, but stick to the plain teas and lemon water.

The Rating

Atmosphere: 4/5

Available food: 3/5

Tea range: 3/5

Tea had: 2/5

Overall: 12/20

First post!

Hello, and welcome to the New Year, and a new start for The Tea Diaries. I moved to Melbourne a few months ago and was astounded to discover that despite an incredibly coffee culture, it is really difficult to get a decent cup of tea here. So! I have decided to start this blog/review to document all things tea in Melbourne.

If you've stumbled across this site then I can only hope you are a fellow lover of tea, or at least enjoy the odd cup, and I hope you will find it a helpful and interesting insight into Melbourne's tea world.

There will be a couple of different reviews on this blog.

• Cafe review - a review of one of Melbourne's many fine establishments, taking in tea range and quality, and types of food available.
• Tea review - a review of a bought tea prepared at home.
• Tea accessories review
• Tea recipes