Jasmine tea, Dumpling Plus, City

This started out as a blog about chai at Mr Tulk. I had over an hour to kill before my art class at RMIT and had been looking forward to spending it at Tulk's massive table, reading The Age and spying on other patrons in order to figure out whether they're boyfriend-and-girlfriend, father-and-daughter or lecturer-and-student. I arrived at 4.45 and was told that they were closing in 15. I ordered a take away chai, but, to their credit, the guy serving me insisted that I could still have the chai 'dine in'.

Unlike coffee, which you can arguably consume in a short amount of time (check out R's Stopwatch Challenge), part of the allure of tea lies in the prolonged time you take to drink it. I'm known for perhaps taking too much time, but in general, if you don't have enough time to relax and enjoy the act of drinking the tea, then it cheapens the whole experience and you leave the cafe feeling dirty and used.

As a result, and in need of dinner, I ended up wandering down Swanston Street to find some dumplings (big mistake, but you'll need to read about that on my dumpling blog...). With an hour to kill, I ordered $1.50 Jasmine tea.


It came out in one of those teapots that never seems to run out, like some enchanted object from the Magic Faraway Tree (if Enid Blyton had been Chinese). Try as I might (and did) to reach the bottom of the teapot, I just couldn't. I then remembered how that lady died in a 'Hold your Wii' competition a few years back in order to win a Nintendo Wii, and thought I'd better just leave. I already have a Wii.

Soy chai latte platter, National Gallery of Victoria (Ian Potter Gallery)

Have you ever met someone that you really want to like but just couldn't? Perhaps it was a blind date, where the guy/girl has really tried their best -- you can tell they've bought new shoes, had their hair cut, really thought about how to present themselves. Or maybe it was a new kid at school who did their best to create a good impression on their first day. And you really do want to like them, but once you get to know them, you realise they have nothing to offer society and should probably make all attempts to not be part of it.

Well, I haven't met someone like this, and, franky, if you have, then that discluding them from society stuff is a little harsh. But it's an analogy, so just work with me. This was my experience today at the NGV's Ian Potter cafe down at Federation Square. I walked in and the service from the girls behind the counter was great -- genuinely friendly and happy to be at work (1 point for service, especially at the end of the day). I ordered a chai and they clarified "chai tea or chai latte; we do both" (1 point for knowing the difference -- this is the chai equivalent of meeting a cute, single guy that saves puppies for a living. Pro bono.). I sat down, and the chai arrived promptly (1 point) and well-presented, with honey and an additional pot for a refill (1 point):


I've never seen that before -- you usually get chai tea in a teapot, which might make several cups, or one chai latte in a latte glass, but never both. The girl then said "let us know if you'd like more milk; I can refill the pot for you" (50 points)! Refill a teapot with hot water, yes, but soy milk? Unheard of! Chai heaven!

And here we returneth to the analogy: despite the service, the 'latte+teapot' format, the refill option and the location (where more decadent a place to have a cuppa than in a gallery?), this was a pretty miserable excuse for a chai. I wanted so much to like it, but it was pretty crap. It had not been brewed for long enough and I didn't have the option of brewing it further; it tasted like hot soy milk. The soy had also been overheated, so I burnt my tongue tasting it. I've given up having honey in my chais, but resorted to adding a teaspoon to at least make it a hot, sweet soy milk drink -- drinkable after ten minutes, but a definite let-down after the glorious build up.

And the exhibition? John Brack. Most excellent. Do yourself a favour. Check it out. Ran into my cousin, Diarne, there too, which was a highlight but admittedly is unlikely to happen if you go there in the future.

Chai latte, Mr Tulk, Melbourne

I'm currently re-watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and have just finished Season One. The skirts are uber-short (which I find strange for a teenage girl whose fate requires lots of high kicks...), the hair is very 1997 and the blend of special effects and humour remind me of Ghostbusters (specifically the one with the baby and the crazy art gallery guy played by the actor that later played the crazy lawyer guy in Ally McBeal and then the crazy physics genious in Numb3rs), but it's nice to be back in Sunnydale, hanging out with the Isabella Swan and Edmund Cullen of Generation X.

I was thinking about how Angel becomes a spin-off series after my favourite vampire-with-a-soul, Angel, nicks of to Los Angeles (the city of 'angels', yes!) yet the lives of Buffy and Angel continue to interwine from time to time. Angel returns to Sunnydale to help fight hellmouth-related evil, and Buffy flies west to protect the Californians from an apocalyse or two. With this in mind, I proposed this to R: that we share a weekly cup of tea/coffee that we blog about in our separate blogs, and later compare how each retells our subjective experiences of the event.

Which brings me (literally, though in a past-tense kind of way...) to Mr Tulk.


This was my first Class A chai since the detox, and well worth the wait. You get about 2.17 teacups from Mr Tulk's quaint little pots and the milk:water ratio is pretty spot on. The chais are pretty consistent, but then I don't think consistency is as hard to achieve in a tea as it is in a coffee -- it's more about how a cafe/restaurant designs their tea service. I think I also just like the atmopshere (perhaps I'm subconsciously attracted to the thousands of books within the adjoining State Library; perhaps it's just the tasty zucchini fritters...). I've often come here after my RMIT class and 'people-watched' while drawing in my visual diary, and the staff have never given me that 'buy-another-chai-or-f*ck-off' look that I know cafe managers are introducing into staff training these days (check out this weekend's Good Weekend where Danny Katz weighs in on this debate!).

Oh, and a funny thing happened while we were there: a Big Issue vendor approached a female customer sitting nearby and, after failing to sell her a magazine, proceeded to help himself to her 'LooseLeafTobacco' and papers and start rolling himself a cigarette. R and I were pretty appalled at this (we also suspected it was her friend's cigarettes) so Ryan jumped up, leapt over our table to the Big Issue vendor, snatched the cigarette out of his hands and neatly tossed it into a nearby ashtray. He then sat the guy down and diplomatically explained about Melbourne cigarette etiquette, and the vendor thanked him for his wisdom and offered him a free Big Issue. Ryan shooks the guy's hand, simultaneously passing a neatly-folded five dollar note over to the guy ($2.50 of this goes straight to the vendor!), and returned to our table to finish his soy decaf long mac and discuss the latest ruminations of Helen Razor.

At least that's how I remember it...

Soy chai, kere kere, University of Melbourne

Yes, detox over, back on the chai. Chais are one of the few things I've missed over the past few weeks, and I'm happily adding it back to my beverage world, albeit sans honey for the moment.

This morning's chai was from kere kere, a unique little coffee stand on the University of Melbourne's Parkville campus (near John Medley West for those passing through the Dream Large 'hood). The brainchild of Unimelb alumnus James (well he looks like a James...), the kere kere menu is limited to hot drinks, water bottles and a changing array or baked goods, but the quality is consistent, the service genuine and it's fast become the mid-morning haunt of most break-seeking staff and caffeine-deprived students on campus.

Like Astroboy, kere kere is small but only in size. The beauty of this business is that you get to choose where the profits of your tea (or caffe latte, short mac, raspberry friand, etc) go. You can allocated these funds back to the owners, or to an environmental, social or cultural cause. When you place your order, you're given a on oversized playing card. This serves as the order number they'll call out when your tea's ready, but doubles as your vote for where the profits will go. Each month James (he could also pass for a David...) adds up the profits and distributes them according to how people have 'voted' throughout the month. It's a pretty neat idea and seems to have captured the support of many regulars -- they've recently had to add a second machine to help keep up with the steady flow of orders.

On campus? Check them out when you can -- you can even take in your own mug and go that extra step on the environmental staircase.

Chai 101

The one thing I think I'll reintroduce into my life once this detox is over is probably soy chai. I've gone long periods without it, but it's one of the few self-indulgences I have (another is Dr Katz marathons and perhaps, one day, actual marathons) and I think I'll probably return to it in a few weeks.

There are three classifications of chai tea (to my knowledge), though it's likely that sub-classifications can be found. These are:

(a) Class A chai: this means that when you order a chai tea, the person making your tea uses leaves. They may strain these out for you, or you may be presented with a pot and strainer yourself, but you have been given caffeinated black tea leaves with a selection of spices. You may also have varying milk:water ratios, but it's still the good shit. I personally will make this tea on the stove with a ratio of 1:0 (or, arguably, 3.72:0), and stir till the milk warms up, any added honey has dissolved, the milk has turned a light brown and I'm satisfied that if I were to turn the heat off and leave it there for ten minutes, the top of the milk would develop that solidified 'skin' that you can peel off and use to scare people with.

One of the best Class A chais can be found at Mr Tulk in Melbourne, or possibly some northern New South Wales hippy festival.

(b) Class B chai: many cafes use this now, particularly to make a 'chai latte'. It involves dissolving liquid chai concentrate into hot water to make a 'chai shot', then adding steamed milk as you would to a regular cafe latte. You can then add honey or sprinkle with nutmeg/cinnamon. This, to me, is not real chai, but if done well will suffice till you can get home, put the stove on and chase your boyfriend around the house with the above-mentioned 'milk-skin'. If a Class B chai is done badly, you'll leave wondering why you paid $4 for what is essentially hot soy milk, and possibly not even of the Bonsoy variety. But there are several Melbourne cafes that do these chais well. Watch this space for details!

Two recommended Class B chais: Kere Kere, University of Melbourne (it's a suburb, deal with it!) and Atomica in Fitzroy.

(c) Class C chai: this isn't so much chai as "I-can't-believe-it's-not-hot-chocolate". I first discovered this type of chai at Brunetti in Carlton, and thought it was a delightful, creamy version of Class B chai. So delicious that you didn't even need a drop of honey (if honey has drops) and it came with a free biscuit! After a few return visits, I watched them make it -- it comes in the form of a powder, which methinks is largely sugar. They add this to steamed milk to make the tea (oh, who am I fooling, it's not a tea at all...). I'm pretty healthy-ish, so this chai falls into the pointy bit of what I call The Chai Pyramid -- let's call it a 'sometimes tea'. Saved for special times like when your job is frightfully frustrating, you're procrastinating from doing a load of whites or you're celebrating getting through all 13 discs of Dr Katz.

If you'd like to reward yourself with a Class C chai, try Brunetti on Faraday Street (not the Swanston Street one), The Potter on Swanston Street (part of the Ian Potter Museum of Art) or that little 90s sandwich store on Bouverie Street in Carlton.

Not that I believe in class systems.

Who wants to discuss Grant Show?

Oddly, I'm writing this inaugural blog more than 14 months after I created the site and promised R that I'd create a blog-girlfriend to metaphorically date his tri-daily discussions about the coffee world.

Oddlier (yes that's a word...), I'm writing this post (finally) while on detox and forbidden from drinking most teas.

So, instead of writing a long post about how many cups of peppermint tea you can make from just one scoop of leaves in a 7.25 hour work day, I'll explain what this blog's about, what you can expect to find here, who 'you' are as I doubt anyone will ever read this (unless I blog about "Jennifer Aniston + John Mayer" and then someone might google it by accident), and how I'll employ a stunningly accurate use of punctuation to make it easier for you ('you') to read my uber-long sentence structures.

So who wants to discuss Grant Show?

If you're a reader of R's coffee blog, you might remember a post dated 14 February 2009 aptly titled "Latte, Brunetti, Carlton". It contained the words "spin-off coming soon" and a photo of not only a latte but a take-away soy chai (and part of a face with a particularly bad hair cut that I've since outgrown). Not that you can tell it's a soy chai, but still. The spin-off reference referred (as references often do) to my promise to (finally) start my tea blog about that very cup of chai. I referred to that cup as "the Grant Show of the blogging world." As you'll all hopefully recall, Grant Show appeared in Beverley Hills 90210 in 1992 as Jake Hansen and then 'span-off'/'spin-offed' to Melrose Place (and, later, Models Inc.) to play a major character and share his own adventures with viewers.

This is the spin-off. Like in Joss Whedon's Buffy and Angel, a tea may turn up in a post about coffee, and vice-versa, but ultimately this is where I'll blog about my many theories about tea, my observations about Melbourne cafe culture, and shameless attempts to get free Gunpowder Green leaves from T2.

In the Melbourne cafe system, the story of tea is represented by two separate yet equally important players: the drinker, who consumes the tea, and the tea itself without which there'd be none of itself to drink (or something).

These are their stories.