Interlude: New Café on Kent Street

Cora’s, a little lady from La Belle Province started it, has high prices and fair portion size. Breakfast is their foraa, and they do it reasonably well. Service quite often is subject to locality.

Bubble tea is a mystery to me, the bastard broth of weird space-ship style cafes in the Square One Mall in Mississauga.

A friend of mine lives next door to this place and has said nothing but good things about the great smells and friendly staff that seem to have been popping up the last few weeks.

“bubble” tea? Does this mean they are actually advertising that they ~boil!~ water before pouring it over bags? Or are they advertising the unpardonable sin of boiling tea? I’m willing to investigate and report back.

Wherever did the Murphy Restaurants learn the fine art of teamaking?

These places (all of them) will serve you the worst possible cup of tea and charge you the highest prices I’ve ever seen (Europe and USA included). What’s worse is the blinding range of snarky remarks which can be returned no matter how politely one says, “Would you please make sure the water comes to a rolling boil before pouring it over the bag(s) please?”

They’ll serve anything slightly warm to the touch as long as the water looks a little dirty. I’m sure they’ve served me tea no hotter than 70C.

To pick on the Murphy chain is a little unfair except that a certain (spectacular) staffer over at 42 Street has become accustomed to my $5.00 tips (for tea alone) when it arrives as it should. Other than that particular gentleman, ~never~ does a Murphy employee get it right there or anywhere else.

Smitty’s is pretty good — it’s as close as one can get to acceptable tea without making it properly — but 99% of everyone else gets it wrong.

Viva’s and Harbour House need no instructions to get it right — nor does McDonalds!

Tea — such a wonderful drink when properly prepared… fairly good plant food when it isn’t.

I am remiss. The Formorsa Tea House never gets tea wrong just like Viva’s and Harbour House. Their claim to fame is the selection you can get any time they are open.

My suspicion about the tea preparation difficulties is that many restaurants have a ‘tea warmer’, basically a giant holding tank with an element in it for (allegedly) very hot water. This is often the only place from which tea-preparing employees can acquire water for tea, and nobody ever really checks the temperature of the water in the tea-warmer, its just assumed to be boiling. In the olden days when I was a waiter, when I used to have one of what I’ll ‘the tea people’ as a customer, I would use the coffee maker, sans coffee, to boil water. This usually placated the tea people. Quite frankly, I think there are better ways to ask for your tea to be hot than to say “Would you please make sure the water comes to a rolling boil before pouring it over the bag(s) please?”, as this pre-supposes that your server will bring you cold tea, and essentially demeans them before they’ve done anything wrong or negligent, creating a confrontational customer-server dynamic. I’d recommend something along the lines of “Pardon me, but I’m quite particular about my tea being very hot, and I find its best if the water comes to a rolling boil before its poured over the bag. If you could look after this for me I’d appreciate it very much.” I think this could reduce the number of snarky looks by 72%.

Secret discovered for perfect cup of tea
Chemical engineer’s claim

BobaPals (boba characters)?

What will they come up next? There are new toy characters out there that are coming to the market. Supposedly, these characters have been drinking so much boba that they have evolved to beautiful BobaPals and have special feng shui powers of some sort. Can’t wait to see how they look like! I guess we can find these bobapals at boba stores or maybe bobapals.com? Anyway, if you love boba, you gotta check out these bobapals.

boba_lover