| On those iced tea orders, specify everything to a T
Now that a dining companion has taken to ordering iced tea "60-40" -- the desired ratio of sweet to unsweet -- and not been shot, I've decided there's no excuse for anything but clear communication between diner and server about tea. Not to mention everything else. So I appreciated a recent thread on a food Web site about missing modifiers -- words that servers should volunteer for clarity or that diners should ask further about, to be sure. People complained about ordering "tea" and not getting what they wanted. Some wanted plain and got fruit-flavored; some wanted sweet and got unsweet, some wanted hot and got cold (no, they weren't from around here). So whose responsibility is this? Everyone's, in an ideal world. But barring that, I'd break it down this way: • Diners should specify sweet or unsweet or hot when they expect basic and ubiquitous orange pekoe (which is a form of black tea: think Lipton).
Brewing harmony in a teacup
RIGA - “We want Latvian people to understand that tea is more than hot water, we want them to understand the world of tea," said Ilze Konovalova of downtown Riga's newly opened Chado tea house. Konovalova is clearly passionate about tea. When anyone shows an interest, she will rifle through the massive selection, pointing out the different varieties and occasionally lifting a particularly aromatic tea out of the bunch for people to sniff. Her narratives about tea always come back to her personal favorite, oolong milk. Her eyes light up as she talks about how each time the unique tea is brewed, the flavor subtly changes. The Chado tea house, which is now in its third month of existence, is hoping to set up a tea culture similar to the wine culture that exists in France, she explained. One look at the interior will show just how far Chado goes to achieve that goal.
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