Monday, October 26, 2009

Cocoa Rose Tea


I recently received a comment asking "when will you talk about tea?" The answer is "now."

With cooler weather more or less here to stay (we've been bouncing between snow and 70 degrees), tea season has officially begun. I've been drinking a lot of mate and tung ting, with the occasional herbal like elderberry, hibiscus or lemon thyme from what remains in the garden. But the most interesting non-true tea I've had in recent memory has been the cocoa rose served at Sofra.

Like soy and flax before it, cocoa is now making appearances where it often doesn't belong due to the fact that people think that it will save their lives due to the fact that it does have some healthful attributes but more because the industry is paying massive amounts of money to make you think so. And so I approached cocoa rose tea about as skeptically as I approach rooibos chai, which is to say very skeptically.

And yet it was wonderful. The bitter richness of the unsweetened cocoa, the full perfume of the rose petals. At once earthy and celestial, it worked.

When I was in middle school, one of my teachers blew my mind by saying that it didn't matter if you ate healthily because you could still get hit by a bus. From then on, I would use this rationale as my excuse to eat ho ho's and drink liters of Jolt, which was a bar mitzvah's version of being a devil may care bon vivant.

To some extent, I still believe in my teacher's words. But if, at the moment that reckless MBTA bus splattered your brains across Mt. Auburn Street, you had a cup of cocoa rose in your hand, you'd go out smiling.

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8 comments:

Aariq said...

Yay for Red Blossom! I just made an order from them. I am originally from the bay area and this is for sure my favorite tea shop in china town. The owners are very knowledgeable and friendly and they won't cheat you over like some of the more touristy places there do. Their ting tung is pretty good. Have you tried the silk oolong from there? It's a milk-scented oolong and it is delicious.

Aaron Kagan said...

Aariq-

Why yes, the milk-scented is the one other tea I got there when visiting San Fran, and that and the tt have become some of my all time favorites. Any other recommendations along those lines?

Aariq said...

The spring san ling xi is one of my favorites. It's a bit pricey at $12 an ounce, but its a good special occasion tea. Its a very smooth but flavorful, unfired oolong that is great with multiple steepings.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for posting about tea. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to come back and see it. But I will definitely try cocoa rose (and san ling xi) when the opportunity arises.

Catherine

Pedro said...

I noticed that you drink mate, and by that I presume you mean Yerba Mate, correct? I feel obligated to inform you that recent studies have shown that it contains a large amount of carcinogens and has been linked to cancer. Just thought you should know. http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/cancer/nutrition/questions

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