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.