a slurp of tea.
Chinese teenagers slurp it, as do British royals, although they’d probably prefer a more refined description.
slurp
verb
1 [I or T] INFORMAL to drink a liquid noisily as a result of sucking air into the mouth at the same time as the liquid:
Do try not to slurp.
I wish you wouldn't slurp your soup like that.
He slurped down his coffee.
2 [I] UK INFORMAL When a thick liquid slurps, it makes loud noises:
The lava slurped and bubbled down the mountainside.
slurp
noun [C] INFORMAL
She paused to take a slurp of tea.
Chinese teenagers slurp it, as do British royals, although they’d probably prefer a more refined description.
slurp
verb
1 [I or T] INFORMAL to drink a liquid noisily as a result of sucking air into the mouth at the same time as the liquid:
Do try not to slurp.
I wish you wouldn't slurp your soup like that.
He slurped down his coffee.
2 [I] UK INFORMAL When a thick liquid slurps, it makes loud noises:
The lava slurped and bubbled down the mountainside.
slurp
noun [C] INFORMAL
She paused to take a slurp of tea.
Weekend in New York | Manhattan Teahouses
Morning or Afternoon, There’s a Kettle Brewing
Joyce Dopkeen/The NewYork Times
Colette Vallot and Laurel Donnellan, right, have European-style afternoon tea in the TY Lounge of the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan.
HOW versatile is tea? It can evoke anything from stuffy formality to cozy comfort.
Chinese teenagers slurp it, as do British royals, although they’d probably prefer a more refined description. It goes well with cucumber sandwiches, barbecued pork or vegetarian dumplings. It can be hot, it can be cold, it can be green, it can be black. It doesn’t even have to be made from the tea plant: just about any dried flowers, fruits or leaves will do.
Unlike coffee, which plays a largely functional role in society (in that it gets society to function), tea is mostly about relaxing. In fact, the only reasonable objection people can have to tea, is that they don’t like tea.
If you have any of those suspicious characters traveling with you when you visit New York, drop them off at Starbucks (conveniently situated one block north, south, east and west of your hotel) and sample a few of the dozens of vastly different corners of Manhattan that devote themselves largely if not exclusively to tea.
Any attempt to list the best tea spots in Manhattan is bound to cause a tempest in a you-know-what, so consider this column merely a sampling of the island’s tea extremes; for more options go to shockingly thorough Web sites like www.teamap.com and www.teaguide.net, apparently run by people who have way too much teatime on their hands.
Even among places with European-style afternoon tea, there are sharp contrasts. On the cozy end of the spectrum is Tea & Sympathy, a little restaurant tucked in beside its little West Village tea and goodies shop, and fitting only 10 tables. (Scratch that, there are 10 tables, but they don’t really fit.)
Though monarchs past and present stare down at you from the walls, the atmosphere is more warm than regal. The $30 tea service brings a vast selection of teas from English Breakfast to Lapsang souchong to chamomile lavender, along with substantial finger sandwiches, hearty scones and big chunks of cake.
Whereas you couldn’t help but feel at home at Tea & Sympathy, you can’t help but feel a little out of place at the Four Seasons, one of the grand Midtown hotels that serves afternoon tea.
Tea service there will run you $46 a person, which comes pretty close to being preposterous, especially when you see the size of the six savories and sweets you choose from a menu of 10 items. (Apparently, a portion of your $46 goes to sophisticated pastry-miniaturization technology.) But those two-bite chicken salad sandwiches, Meyer lemon and blueberry tarts and the like sure are tasty, and the service is as gracious and understated as it is friendly at Tea & Sympathy.
Smaller spots, like the Amai Tea & Bake House or Sympathy for the Kettle, are good for those who would rather avoid the formalities of tea service and focus on the tea itself, with a sweet or two on the side. At Amai, not far from Union Square, you choose from a fascinating list whose provenance is described in excruciating detail, at which point a staff member pulls the leaves out of an old-fashioned library card catalog cabinet. At Sympathy, a Lilliputian, cozier pink-walled shop in the East Village, the list is as vast — about 150 varieties, from oolong to mate to rooibos — as the shop is tiny.
Amai’s big gimmick is that many of the sweets available with tea, are also made from tea. Why this matters is not entirely clear, since your daily allowance of whatever is good in tea is already in the actual tea. But the cookies (Earl Grey and currant, lemongrass and ginger) and the extremely moist green tea cupcake justify the overkill. Sympathy follows suit with an equally good raspberry-and-green-tea cake.
Asian bubble tea — the drinks with those arrestingly chewy tapioca pearls at the bottom — has made it big in recent years. There are spots all over Chinatown, but no need to explore all the way to the Fujianese-only-speaking periphery: right there in the touristy center on Mott Street, the Green Tea Cafe attracts a young Asian crowd.
The flavored tea choices — served hot or cold — are endless, but tea purists should be wary. While a flavor like honey green tea will be recognizably tea-flavored; the strawberry black tea seems wholly derived from strawberry Nestlé Quik. They also have a full snack menu — but no matter what the server tells you, cold sliced duck gizzard does not go well with bubble tea.
A more upscale Asian tea setting is Franchia, the very Zen vegetarian restaurant in Murray Hill that bills itself as a “tea shrine” and offers a menu with more technical details than the other spots: what temperature it is boiled at, for example. The top green choices are from Mount Jilee in South Korea, where tea grows wild; choose between “first-picked,” “second-picked” or “third-picked” variety (guide: the firster, the better).
You don’t have to actually drink your tea on the spot, of course; there are plenty of shops to buy loose tea, and they range from elegant (like Ito En on Madison Avenue at 69th Street) to tiny and old fashioned (like McNulty’s in Greenwich Village).
Enter McNulty’s, and you face a sea of glass jars in a tiny old tin-plate-roofed space, each filled with something delicious-sounding and -looking, from yerba mate to peach to flowery orange pekoe to chamomile. Do be aware, however, that no matter how long you brew their tea at home, scones and cupcakes will not magically appear at its side.
GREEN, BLACK OR WITH BUBBLES?
Tea & Sympathy, 108 Greenwich Avenue (opposite Jane Street); (212) 989-9735; www.teaandsympathynewyork.com.
Four Seasons Hotel, 57 East 57th Street; (212) 758-5700; www.fourseasons.com/newyorkfs.
Amai Tea and Bake House, 171 Third Avenue (between 16th and 17th Streets); (212) 863-9630; www.amainyc.com.
Sympathy for the Kettle, 109 St. Marks Place; (212) 979-1650; www.sympathyforthekettle.com.
Green Tea Cafe, 45 Mott Street (between Bayard and Pell Streets); (212) 693-2888.
Franchia, 12 Park Avenue (between 34th and 35th Streets); (212) 213-1001; www.franchia.com.
Ito En, 822 Madison Avenue (between 68th and 69th Streets); (212) 988-7111; www.itoen.com.
McNulty’s Tea and Coffee Company, 109 Christopher Street (between Bleecker and Hudson Streets; (212) 242-5351; www.mcnultys.com.
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