Tea-licious times

Recently (and by recently I mean over the last month) I’ve had tea, brunch and all manner of meals in several interesting places. I am now straying away from the regular cappucinos and other coffees, especially after that near fatal road accident I had several months ago at a roundabout on a main road after I’d had a large latte (it wasn’t even that large). It really shot my nerves (as before that I’d not had a coffee in months), or rather electrified them.

The cherry on top was the Hopetoun Tea Rooms, off Collins Street, where I celebrated my 23rd birthday in style with a few friends. I guess it’s going to be a little tradition now. This is the cute boutique place that every passer-by just has to linger at for a few moments to marvel at all the glorious sweets and cakes. Service was slightly frosty but luckily the quaint interiors and food compensated for it.

Pear tart. The whipped cream was just perfect too. Nice presentation.

A week or so later I had dinner with my uni mates, after which we had dessert at the Oriental Tea Garden. I just ordered a tea – the “Love Tea”. I kid you not, this is what they called it. And when I was sharing a pot with a guy friend, it was hard to keep a straight face when I ordered it. Well, I was just looking for a laugh (as if love is actually in tea!). The red flower bits are amaranth, and I still don’t know what the urchin thing is… but it tasted like jasmine tea, only with a different aftertaste. Either way, I wasn’t particularly bursting with groovy swirly hearts after a taste of this.

Love Tea – insert thorny metaphor about love looking ugly

A Saturday later, I had “Paradise Garden” at the Tea Rooms in NGV (just before going to see Vienna: Art and Design). I was more intrigued by the description on the menu (well done to the copy writer). Very light and subtle, which may have been overpowered by my eating macaroons and chocolate mousse but even so, this was disappointingly underwhelming in flavour. Looks remarkably like the love tea from earlier, no? Again, I am left stranegly unfulfilled. I much rather their chai tea, which is a more potent variation I’ve had. This has reinforced the appeal of buying a glass tea pot. Because we all like to see what we’re drinking, don’t we?

Paradise looks a lot like love – see above

A few Fridays ago I spent some time working with my friend/client/partner in crime, the writer extraordinaire, Lexxie Couper, at the Auction Rooms, which I’d been eager to try out for a while. North Melbourne has a lot of quaint cafes, and are better than the ones in the city and outer east to my mind, with less pretension about them too. Or at least they do pretension in a more underhand way. Maybe I’m just biased because I live on this end – and I did attend high school in this area for six years.

Chai tea, bacon and eggs and avocado and fetta cheese = happy Jen. Lexxie is typing away on her laptop there (writing her newsletter—YES–WIN!). And she had banana bread lathered in coffee butter, I think it was.

The next day I again ate out (I felt almost a glutton) for afternoon tea and dinner. Met up with the romance tweeps (ie. Twitter people) at Laurent, a bakery/cafe on Wellington Parade in East Melbourne. The cake I picked was yum, but I don’t recommend the chai. It was very weak and too frothy.

Meanwhile, my eye caught on something interesting:

Pacman has good taste! Get it?

What can I say, I am a ruthless artist who will do anything, even sacrifice my friends’ meal experience, for that perfect photo opportunity. Not for myself, you understand, but for art! With thanks to Camille’s passionfruit tart and Ms Sara Creasy’s lime and pistachio macaroons.

This cake is called the Bora Bora. I call it the rodent racing car. It was actually quite good. The macaroon pieces were a nice touch and the layered chocolate coconut mousse was rich but not rich enough that I felt like chucking up by the end.