Good evening.
It's about 10 pm in Brooklyn, cool skies, and my Harney and Son's Earl Grey Supreme is cooling a few feet in front of me.
Tonight I will tell you the story about my quest for Tibetian tea, in flushing.
It all started when a few days ago I was talking to a customer and he mentioned he had tried Tibetian tea and a store in Flushing. He also mentioned that they had given him for his birthday a jar of 100 year old Liu Bao. Now when I hear stories like this I am always a little skeptical. For example, I heard that during the cultural revolution many pu erhs were destroyed because they were considered too much a part of the old culture. So when I hear that a store gave a customer, no matter how loyal, a jar of "100 year old" tea I get suspicous. In any case though it sounded like it had good tea so I wanted to try.
Now I'm from Brooklyn. Flushing Queens is about as far away from Brooklyn you can go with out getting off the train. Luckily I have friends in Queens who are happy for somebody to come to their borough for once. (if you live outside of manhattan, you understand this feeling). I met up with my friend Angela in soho and after a lunch of Indian food and awkward Okcupid date stories we rode off into the sunset that is Queens.
We caught the 7 and rode it all the way to the last stop. We got off the train and ascended the stair to Flushing Queens. For those who don't know Flushing, is this small area of queens that is densely populate by chinese. I have only been there once before so I will reframe from writing about it too much, but when I got off the train I was met with the sights of older asian women blocking the sun with umbrellas, small shops, and a old women repeatedly asking for a dollar who has aperently been doing that for years.
Luckily for us the tea store was on the same block as the train. If it wasn't for a small sign in the window that said Jang Tea, we never would have known it was there. Between two small shop fronts there is a hallway. Going down the hall you pass a one room office, what looks like a tiny antique shop and then you reach Jing.
Jang chose quality over quantity. The store is a single room with a cash register in the middle and two serving table on each side. Lining the walls are class cases with tea pots inside. But these are no ordinary tea pots. Each pot is unique in its design and material. The one that caught my eye was a small tea pot made out of a black mineral whose name I have forgotten. You can tell when you look around that while it may not look like much, this place is going to have real tea.
We were greeted by a lovely young lady, whose ears perked in controlled excitement when I asked about Tibetian tea. She offered us a tasting and we happily excepted.
The tasting was simple, lovely, and friendly; everything you should expect in tea. She took us through the traditional chinese tasting style with the Tibetian brick tea. The tea fit the occasion almost perfectly. While it was not exploding with flavor the tea seemed to have a smooth personality of its own. Through the five or so brews that she made the tea stayed light and a little sweet. The first cup we tasted reminded me of an aged Tiguanyin. It had a light woodsie flavor to it. Like the orange leaves in Autumn right before the fall from the tree. As the brewing got on it kept that lightness but gained a full ness at the same time. It turned into more of light maple syrup like flavor, but was easy on the tounge, while giving you a little body in the back of the mouth when it went down. After a few cups the host, who had been chatting with us the whole time, told us to not just notice the tea but to notice how the tea made us feel. Angela and I noticed that while the tea was light, it also made us feel light. Like gravity was just a little easier on us. The host nodded and told us that was a characterstic of tibetian tea.
Next we tried a raw Pu Erh. The first thing I noticed was that this tea felt hotter. When I asked, the host told me that they were brewed at the same tempature. We then discussed a bit the chi of tea. That besides the taste and smell, tea has energy. While the tibetian tea had a more cool or yin energy, this tea was more hot or yang; and you could tell right away if you compared them. Comparisons aside the Pu Erh was still good. There was a fruit note that really came out in the third cup and persisted through to the end; going from a light lychee to a darker black currant. The heat of the Pu Erh made me appriecate the tibetian tea a little more.
At the end both tasting for two people came to $20 all together and took at least 30 minutes. It was a very fair price for the exiperence. I tried to buy a brick of the Tibetian, but I didnt have the funds that day. (One brick was 67, the other 92 and they didnt sell smaller quntities.) I will deffiently go back for that tea, more tasting and other information from our very well informed host.
After we left and got a little Mochi I convinced Angela to go to Jackson Hieghts with me to check out a Tibetian resturaunt that suppousedly had Yak butter milk tea. When we got off the train though we realized it was closed and so we instead when to another small tibetian place.
It was a small quant place across from a more fancy tibetian place that seemed a little too official then what we were in the mood for. At the smaller place I ordered the butter tea.
Man was it buttery. The thick creamyness was combined with a saltyness and a little sweetness from the tibetian tea, that I would not have been able to pick out if I hadnt just tried it. It mostly tasted like what it was, turned butter not yet solidified. While it was a little strange on its own it paired well with the tibetian food in a weird way. If you're ever around Jackson stop in and give the butter tea a taste, just for kicks.
All in all I learned a few things.
1. Tea has chi its self. I kind of knew this already, but the tasting really brought the idea home.
2. Tibetian Tea is good and not just because of the taste.
3. Flushing is surprisngly easy to get to. The 7 quickly goes to and from times square.
4. A hang out with a girl you are kind of friends with, start to feel like a date.
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