Tea with a dash of sarcasm - Minimo review

For some reason, I am not at all sure why, going out for breakfast has become relegated to "special occasion" dining for my little swag of friends. Luckily it was Master M's birthday over the weekend - the perfect excuse to make the trek up Sydney Road to one of our favourite haunts, Minimo. I haven't been to Minimo in a good 6 months, and, having been a bit lax on the reviews of late, I was interested in rediscovering their tea selection.

Cafe review: Minimo
Where: 822 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

We were greeted by a very enthusiastic waiter, who I think I can safely say made my day. He informed us that they were trying a new blend of rudeness and sarcasm in their service, as that was the "new black" in cafes these days. This could have backfired horribly, but his service that day was just the right mix of hilarity and charm that he pulled it off.

As it was not the best of weather and we were sat outside, I decided I wanted something milky and asked if there was chai available. "Do we have chai," the waiter scoffed, then proceeded to outline in great detail the option of a chai latte, or traditional chai in a pot. The waiter's skill in describing was so great that he managed to convince Lady J to swap from a croissant to the daily special of rhubarb hotcakes. I opted for a pot of chai made on soy and a ham and cheese croissant. (I know there are chai purists who will scoff at me getting soy milk with my chai, but my reasoning is thus: in Australia most chais are blended to go with soy milk, and really one finds it hard to go past the bonsoy option when it's available).

The drinks took a while to arrive, but the company was good enough that it was just on the tail end of acceptable. My only qualm was that the tea leaves in my chai clogged up the spout of the teapot when I first went to pour, and then rushed out in a great tea-y mess that covered my menu. The waiter gave me a dry look and a dig about making a mess, but quickly cleared it up. The chai itself was not the best I've had, but it was good overall, though I would have liked the option of honey instead of only sugar being available. It was sweet and spicy without being overly peppery, but it could have done with a bit more depth of flavour I feel, perhaps some more nutmeg or cinnamon.

Part of the unfortunate spillage

 The food lived up to the waiter's amazing descriptive powers. My croissant was buttery and delicious, and I will admit to stealing several bites of Master M's eggs with anchovy sauce, while Lady J's hot cakes were simply divine. While I was unable to decipher what brand of tea Minimo uses, I was assured there was a good, high quality range, and I have absolutely no problem with returning to sample more of their teas.

The Rating
Atmosphere: 4.5/5
Available food: 5/5
Tea range: 3.5/5
Tea had: 4/5 
Overall: 17/20

Oh Carolina, what have you done - cafe review

Carolina café has always been on the elusive side since it’s opened for me. My friend Miss B and I have been trawling up Nicholson St for months trying to find it. Oddly enough it was on an outing with Master M that I stumbled across this inconspicuous café – it is one of those “so cool” places that rely on word of mouth rather than signage to draw people in.

Well, now that it’s location had been discovered, fellow tea lover, Miss B and I organised to have a business meeting there Sunday morning. Naturally we were both keen to try the tea, and the coolish start to the day made it an ideal temperature to enjoy a pot.

We arrived around 10.30, and the lovely outside area was packed so we sat in the booth inside. A blackboard proclaimed the tea to be provided by Vee Tea, a brand Miss B and I were both unfamiliar with, but we do love trying new things. A white tea with jasmine and liquorice caught our eye. I will admit to being quite a fan of T2’s liquorice leg, so I was curious to see how this would translate to a white tea.

Now, I don’t like to complain about slow service in hospitality, having spent a good deal of years working in the industry myself. But Miss B and I waited half an hour for our tea. And we witnessed the barista using boiling water right out of the coffee machine onto our white tea. I am yet to figure out how pressing one button on a coffee machine equates to us waiting half an hour. It didn't add to our mood when Miss B ordered some raisin toast, only to be later told they had run out.

Sadly, things did not improve from there. Inspection of the tea revealed rose and jasmine petals, and a lovely golden liquor poured from the pot. The taste was…interesting. The liquorice overpowered everything, starting on a sweet note and then completely covering the mouth a few seconds after swallowing the tea. It was much stronger than I was accustomed to when mixed with a black tea, and I don’t think white tea has enough body to pull off such an overpowering flavour. Miss B was not a fan at all, and I ended up drinking most of the pot while she got a piccolo latte to clear away the taste.

Perhaps we made a poor decision on tea choice, but the whole experience was a bit of a let down. I have had decent tea there before, but that was one of Carolina’s own herbal tea blends. This may have to be one tea review I give a second chance further down the track.

The Rating
Atmosphere: 3/5
Available food: 2/5 (good available range, loss of points for running out of what we ordered)
Tea range: 3/5
Tea had: 2/5
 Overall: 9/20

Solo trip - John Gorilla review

Hello fellow tea-lovers! I would like to apologise in advance for the short review on John Gorilla. I normally write the reviews within a day of visiting a cafe, and due to an unusually busy this review has had to wait until today - so my memory is a bit sketchy. But I know good tea when I have it!

Cafe review: John Gorilla

Where: 49 Pearson St, West Brunswick

Being fortunate enough to be faced with a Friday afternoon off and lacking internet in the house (disastrous!) I once again made the trek over to West Brunswick for a second attempt at John Gorilla. It was a fairly miserable, grey afternoon, typical of Melbourne so I expected the café to be fairly busy.

This visit met with success however! I found a plethora of available tables and a very friendly, attentive team of staff.  It was just around lunch time so I ordered a toasted pumpkin dahl sandwich to go with my English breakfast tea and set up with my laptop to access the free wifi. I knew from sniffing around the tea scene that John Gorilla stocked Larson & Thompson tea, so I was fairly confident in a decent cup of tea.

I was not disappointed. What a cute set up for tea! I particularly liked the tiny milk bottles and the bright colours of the tea pot. The tea itself went superbly with the pumpkin dahl (which was delicious). It was a lovely, well rounded tea suited for milk and sugar, and just right for overcast weather. I have to say my only qualm was that the wifi kept dropping out, which is very frustrating when trying to do work. I also wasn’t really sold on the available sweet offerings, but it’s early days yet for John Gorilla and they seem to be doing a cracking job. Just be prepared to wait for a table if you visit on a weekend.

The Rating
Atmosphere: 3.5/5
Available food: 4/5
Tea range: 4/5
Tea had: 4/5

Overall: 17.5/20

Not quite John Gorilla - Factory Cafe Review

Yesterday, being a perfectly miserable day, a friend from West Brunswick and I decided it was high time to check out all the fuss about the newest café in the area, John Gorilla. Unfortunately we didn’t count on nearly everyone in the vicinity having the exact same idea as us. Faced with hungry stomachs and a wait over half an hour for a table, my friend suggested we venture around the corner to a lesser known café by the name of Factory.

Cooking with Tea

Now I will be the first to admit that I'm not altogether behind the idea of cooking with tea. Oh, I find it all fascinating and get very excited every time I stumble across a recipe, but I've really never had much success with it all. I would love to tea smoke a fish or tea poach a chicken, but the flavours never seem to come out properly.

Baking, on the other hand, is a hobby I spend far too much time indulging in. Tea and sweets seem made to go together. I've had varying degrees of success when trying to incorporate tea right into my baking, and I will share some of these with you at a later date. However, I thought today I would share with you a little something is a little easier, a lot more foolproof, and tastes enough like tea that you won't mind it's really tea free!

Chai Cupcakes

Ingredients
1 cup self-raising flour
2-3 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp all spice
1/2 tsp ground cardamon
125g butter (at room temperature)
2/3 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk

Preheat your oven to 180. Prepare some muffin tins by lining with pattipans (or if you are very lucky, someone will have given you a delightful set of tea cupcake moulds).
Beat the butter and brown sugar until pale and creamy. Add in eggs, one at a time, while beating.
Add the spices and 1/2 a cup of flour. Mix this all together, then add 1/3 cup of buttermilk and mix again. Add the rest of the flour, mix, and then the rest of the buttermilk to finish the batter off.
Fill the muffin tins with the batter, about 3/4 full.
Bake in the pre-heated oven until a skewer comes out clean. This should take between 15-18 minutes, depending on your oven. Don't forget to rotate the tins half way through!

Eat them while still warm, or if you can resist the temptation, let them cool and dust with cinnamon. I like to ice them with a light honey buttercream, but they are especially decadent topped with a chocolate ganache.

Side note: For those simply desperate to incorporate tea into this recipe, may I suggest infusing the buttermilk with an Assam. I would say 3-4 teaspoons for this recipe, in about 3/4 a cup of buttermilk to yield the correct amount. Heat gently and infuse for around 5 minutes.

Faux Pas and A Nice Cup of Tea

Oh dear. Dear readers, just yesterday I made the most unforgivable of tea-related faux pas. Let me relate the tale...

My fellow tea lover and great friend, we shall call him Master M, called by my house yesterday. I have been a bit lax with my shopping this week, so all I could offer food wise was half a chai tea cupcake before we journeyed off to Prahran to support a friend's band.

Imagine my horror when Master M pointed out, as we were lining up for the gig, that I had failed to offer him tea! Without fail, when I have visited his house I have always had tea (granted this is mostly at my own insistence). I am a terrible host!

 To soothe my anquish, Lady J sent me through this piece this morning which I thought I would share with you all. It is from Mr George Orwell...

A Nice Cup of Tea

A Quest for Scones - Winchelsea Tea Rooms

I have a dear friend, let's call her Lady J, who is a knitter. A voracious knitter, you could say. You will rarely find her without a half-knitted something in her bag. I will admit I've taken advantage of this over the short time I've known her, having acquired a pair of socks, gloves and two hats (all very cosy).

As it would happen, Lady J's birthday is coming up and there was a particular wool shop she wanted to visit near Colac, so as a bit of a pre-birthday expedition we set off on the weekend on a quest for wool and scones. Because every good road trip should include scones and tea at some stages, no?

Return and Covet

Alright, I will be the first to admit - after the amazingly heavenly experience of Monk Bodhi Dharma, which I really didn't think I could top, I put the blog on hold. In the year I've been away I've moved, travelled to China and drunk a whole lot of tea.

The Melbourne tea scene surely seems to be heating up in my absence, with a new tea cafe in Fitzroy and plans for ones in Northcote and West Brunswick. It is to these ends that I am back, navigating the oft times disastrous path of the tea connieseur in the hopes of easing the way for those that follow.

So! Where will we start today?

The problem with so many cafes in Melbourne is that they go to the effort of sourcing a nice tea, and then pour scorching water from the espresso machine over it. I have to say, I'm guilty of a similar crime at work where the only hot water comes out of a dual boiling/chilled filter. So when I was reading a magazine and stumbled across this all I could think was "WANT". What am I coveting this week?

The TeaTotal

Ok, not actually finished development yet, and more for the cafe scene, but can you imagine how this little baby will change the tea drinking experience?

Cambridge Consultants, the brains behind this device, say: Users, in the form of cafe patrons, home consumers, or those at a vending machine, select the preferred loose-leaf tea variety, temperature, and strength level. Instead of walking away with a tea bag attached to a string dangling out of a to-go cup, the tea drinker becomes witness to the process itself: the tea is introduced to the water, where a stirring mechanism facilitates consistency and steeping efficiency. When ready, the finished tea is funneled into a waiting cup

What a completely brilliant idea. Never again would a tea drinker be served a burnt, over brewed tea bag. Fantastic!
Check out more on the TeaTotal here