Can I get a good cup of tea in LA?

I guess the answer is no.
Had a business meeting at Joan's on Third. Really like that place and wonder if I will be making enemies if I say that their iced tea was terrible. I just thought I'd have an iced tea to drink. It was so bitter and strong, I had to add sugar, something I rarely do to tea. Also what is up with putting the drinks in to-go cups when I asked for it for here. Ok, still on the look out for a good cup of tea in LA. Any suggestions? Still love Joan's, just won't order iced tea again.

Lamill Coffee in Silverlake

Lamill Coffee in Silverlake is from the name, the place to get coffee, not necessarily tea. This is a coffeehouse but they do have a nice and well balanced list of teas. Went for lunch here and overall a good experience. I ordered a green tea they had on the menu, and even though I know quite a bit about tea, I didn't know how to pronounce the Chinese name or know the tea. So being adventurous I wanted to try this one, organic magnolia Yuncui green. When I said to the waitress, I would like this green tea, not sure how to pronounce it, hoping she would help me out, she responded, "I don't know either." Ok, not the answer I was expecting, but it is a coffee place. One friend got a silver needle, white tea and the other ordered iced tea. The iced tea was said to be a green tea. When it came it had other flavors in it, and having allergies my friend wanted to know what else was in the tea. That took quite a while and ended up having flowers in it, so she chose not to finish it. Side note food was excellent. Both the white & the green tea were bitter, again this could be due to too long steep time or too hot water. The tea came in a glass pot and the leaves had been removed, which is fine for presentation, but re-steeping, especially oolongs is important. The white tea was listed as a silver needle, but the waitress when asked said that all the teas were blended with lots of other ingredients & that nothing was pure tea. I didn't correct her, but my tea & the silver needle from flavor appeared to be just tea, not blends with herbs & flowers. They menu had cool names for the blends, but when asked what the ingredients were in the blends, the waitress responded, "there are 8 million ingredients in the blends," and therefore couldn't really give us a better idea of what was in the tea.
Things they did right:
- nice atmosphere & good music
- cool descriptions of tea, not the usual flowery, fussy, but modern & hip
- nice presentation with glass pot
- loose leaf tea (assumed because we didn't see the tea)
- tea given equal time in the beverage menu (beverage menu much larger than food)
- loose leaf tea tin available for purchase
Things that were off:
- staff knowledge of tea (might just be our particular waitress)
- took forever to find out what the iced tea was made of & it was a standard menu item
- tea preparation seemed flawed, not sure of the problem, but outcome was bitter tea
- no leaves so re-steeping isn't an option
- different cups for different tea, but no real reason
- price warrants better knowledge of what they are selling
Side note, the bench seats are uncomfortable & hard to get in & out of, recommend sitting in chairs.
3 leaves out of 5
For trying to make tea hip and atmosphere.
They might want to up their training of staff on tea, since about half the people were drinking tea.

Tea Review of Bird Pick Tea and Herb

This weekend did some more checking out tea in Los Angeles & Pasadena.
I had been hearing about Bird Pick Tea & Herb, for over a year. Finally getting to check out the place. It is located in Old Town Pasadena in a great storefront. The shop is calming right when you walk in and you are greeted by friendly and knowledgeable staff. I didn't really quiz them but they were attentive and helpful. My friends both ended up buying tea accouterments. They have a wide selection of pots, cups, tools and everything you need to make a good cup of tea, and lets face it lots of things that you don't need but are cute and make nice gifts. I found the displays a bit overwhelming & the pre-made gift baskets not to my liking. The packaged sets were nice and so were the teapots available. They offered tea samples and I tried a gen mai cha, Japanese green tea with toasted rice, and a keemun, a Chinese black tea. Here is were they really fell down in my book. Both tea samples were bitter, I don't know if they steeped too long, or used too hot water. My friends thought the gen mai cha was terrible, I agreed that it wasn't good. But I didn't blame the tea, which I love normally, while others don't care for it, I blamed the preparation. I also think the way they display the tea is pretty, with large clear glass containers, but it is the worst way to store tea. Tea should be stored in a cool, dry location away from light. They even had matcha tea powder out in the sun, which I have always been told needs to be refrigerated in a airtight container to keep it fresh. I think they could keep the tea in glass for display only, but have other containers that they pull from to fill orders. I would not buy my tea from a vendor that stored tea in clear glass, because freshness means more flavor & more beneficial anti-oxidants.
Things they did right:
- greet customers & offered samples
- good location & atmosphere
- lots of choices for loose leaf tea
- lots of choices for teapots and accessories
- tea cart with on the spot preparation, cool feature
Things that were not great:
- tea stored in CLEAR glass containers (they did have air tight lids) in the SUN
- tea preparation not great or had changed in flavor sitting in airpots
2 out of 5 leaves
Mainly for the staff & atmosphere and bringing tea to the masses, but I would not recommend the store for buying tea, just tea accessories.
Since they are opening up 2 more stores in the Los Angeles area, they might want to re-think the clear glass jars!

Musings on a Rainy Day

Finally got some rain. Not a lot yet, but it is fall in LA & that means the start of what I hope to be a good rainy season, and snow in the mountains. We are officially in a drought and on restricted watering for yards. Since I really don't have any grass, that has not been a problem. I ripped out my front yard slowly, but the change over the 8 years I have lived here are dramatic. I am posting a picture of the house when I first moved in & today. It has been the most interesting thing to witness the changes in wildlife to my yard. I have bees, butterflies, moths, birds, and all sorts of bugs. Some of them are beneficial & some not so much, but being eco-friendly/organic means not using chemicals on my yard. So I hope for ladybugs & use my spray bottle of dish soap & water on the plants. An easy eco-tip is use the dish water from the sink to water any plants with pests on them. You are using greywater that would go down the drain & the soap helps get rid of the pests.
I have lots of testing to do about tea & have to write about what I have found out, but just wanted to put this note in, on this rainy day in LA.

Eco Ideas large & small

I was planning to do a second eco-salon, but the first Sunday of the month was Labor Day weekend & then I just didn't get my act together to do it the 2nd Sunday, so next month will be the 2nd eco-salon.
The reason I didn't get my act together was I was in the Rocky Mountains at the Telluride Film Festival. It was beautiful as always and they are doing some really cool eco friendly things with the fest. I worked the Festival as the assistant manager of the Abel Gance, the outdoor theater in the middle of town. Beautiful to see films under the stars, but it gets cold & there was some rain. That didn't stop us, we still showed movies.
Back to the eco/green ideas. Biggest one was they had Brita as a sponsor & every pass holder & all the staff were given Nalgene (BPA free of course) water bottles. Then they set up Water Filling Stations around the theaters so people could fill up. They lost out on the revenue of selling bottled water, but what a great idea. The water was just filtered town water, filters provided by Brita, naturally. The Wastemasters (trash pickup by the staff) were so happy. They said the worst part of the job was picking up the trash with so many 1/2 empty bottles of water, super heavy & messy. They had to empty them to recycle them.
NOTE: The lids on bottles are usually not recyclable so if you leave it on, it may get thrown in the trash to save time or it has to be twisted off by a sanitation worker to be recycled. So REMOVE YOUR LIDS when recycling plastic bottles. Or better yet, don't buy them & use a refillable bottle.
Ok enough about that, they also had Alice Waters consult on the food provided by the festival. She made a menu that took advantage of locally grown ingredients and organic ingredients. Funny thing is Ann Cooper used to do the food program & is now big in revamping school food programs, check out her lecture on the TEDtalks program. Will try to post a link for that.
So getting back into the swing of things here in Los Angeles. Miss siptea and talking tea, so tonight I am going to see Gail at Algabar, a great place to buy tea in Los Angeles, that is also closing it's doors. I think LA needs to pick up it's game in the world of tea & all things green. Prove me wrong, tell me about green things happening in LA.
Will post soon lots to blog about. Forgot how good it feels to get some of these things out there.

Eco-Salon

So it's been awhile & I finally put together something I had been planning for a while. An eco-Salon at my house. We had the first one on the 2nd of August. There were about ten people here, our guest of honor was Erik Knutzen. He lives in my neighborhood and has a blog. http://www.homegrownevolution.com/ also has a book, called "The Urban Homestead." It was fun and topics ranged from greywater, to chickens, to gardening. It was a fun mix of people and made me realize I needed to have a sign in sheet or some way to keep track of the people who came & the interest & expertise. Lots of knowledgeable people. The next one is set for the 2nd Sunday in September. Hope to be better about blogging closer to the event and want to start a link database for the sites/resources that were talked about.

Intelligentsia for Tea

Another in the series of reviews of tea in Los Angeles.
Intelligentsia in Silverlake
I ordered an Oolong, Iron Goddess of Mercy $4.50 (I think that was the price) Sat down with my friend who had a Cafe au Lait, which they messed up by giving her a regular drip coffee but soon corrected. Had a nice chat in the sun after having hiked in Griffith Park and had 2 steeps out of the leaves of this fabulous Oolong tea.
Good things:
-Loose leaf tea! No teabags!
-Nice setting with outdoor seating.
-Good but small selection of teas.
-Tea presented in a glass double wall cup without handle & small glass teapot. Cup looked to be about a 6 oz. cup, but might have been 8. Teapot was perfect size to fill cup completely.
-Glass pot let you see the leaves as they opened up.
-Wood tray to hold cup & teapot.
-Told by staff that I could get another refill on water. Nice, especially for an Oolong.
-Tea smelled wonderful and could tell it was quality just from the scent.
Things not up to the level of the coffee preparation:
-Don't know when the water went into the pot & no instructions about how long to steep from staff, so guessed when the 3 min were up. Standard steeping time for an Oolong, but I guessed wrong because the tea was already a bit bitter. Still could tell it was a really nice Oolong.
-Seems like they put too much tea in the pot. I recommend 3g per 6oz. water or approximately 1 table spoon per cup. Looked to be about 2 times the tea I would recommend. Just makes for a stronger cup, but shouldn't be bitter if steeped properly, just strong.
-Glass cup was nice, but couldn't really see the color of the liquor, the tea took on the color of the table & changed with the color of the wood tray. Still prefer white porcelain. Points in my book though for the non-traditional presentation, very nice with the glass pot.
-2nd steep I thought I would have more control, since I brought the pot in to get refilled so I could see when the water was added. Here was the DOWNFALL of the whole process, ONE water boiler, I assumed set at boiling, so the tea was in water that was too hot.
-Tried to compensate with a shorter steep, but still slightly bitter, most likely due to the water being too hot.
-No mention either time how long the tea needed to steep from the staff.
-Tea seemed an after thought for the staff.
-Price reflected the quality of the tea, but not the preparation or training of the staff on tea. Seemed overpriced for what I was given.
Seems like tea is still a second class citizen in the coffee-centric US & Los Angeles. I have read about the person who buys tea for Intelligensia & he seems very dedicated & as concerned with quality as the coffee roasters. The website even mentions that the tea needs to steep at a lower temp. & recommends a 30sec steep, which wasn't relayed to the customer by the staff. I think the quality of the tea was done a disservice by how the staff prepared the tea. They need to get another water boiler, or have a way to hold water at different temperatures. It would have ruined a good green tea, if I had order that. Intelligentsia is giving people who want to try tea a bad taste in their mouth, bitterness rather than the sweet variety of an outstanding Oolong Iron Goddess of Mercy.
4 out of 5 leaves for the quality of the tea