Japanese Restaurant - Worst Cup of Tea Ever
Flabbergasted. I am flabbergasted. I just came from a nice Japanese place were I was served an extrememly hot and very bitter cup of green tea. Not only was it way over steeped but it was extrememly cloudy. Oh the humanity!
My daughter called me a tea snob. I say it not too much to ask for a Japanese restaurant to know how to steep tea. If a southern white girl can make a decent cup…
Uggg I hate that! I’ve had some bitter/sour oversteeped teas at a couple chinese restaurants. Also had some lukewarm watery genmaicha at sushi places.
Ahhh, I hate when you get bad tea with Japanese food, kind of ruins the mood for me. My favorite Japanese place serves hot genmaicha and my favorite ramen place a dark iced oolong, and it just completes the meal in my mind having a wonderful cup of tea to go with it. I kind of expect good tea from Asian restaurants in general (Thai Iced Tea, how I love you!), so getting an ooky bitter one is so disappointing!
The cloudy aspect is not necessarily a bad thing (as there are several Japanese teas that are enhanced with Matcha which would make the tea cloudy), but, the tea should not be bitter. I’m sorry to hear that you had a bad experience.
Where I live they just dump leaves in a big pot and bring it to the customer. So, steeping time is proportional to how long you’ve spent to reach the bottom :) Which means that some teas, especially puers, get really oversteeped…
Most Japanese restaurants seem to give cups of watery genmaicha, which can get cloudy due to the starch in the rice. So I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m happy as long as its not tea from Lipton or some other tea bag. Most customers don’t know good tea when they taste it so I can see why they wouldn’t try too hard in the tea area. Maybe a better tea option on the menu would be good, but again, it would probably go stale before they sell it.
Sorry you had bad tea though! Sometimes I just drink my tap water and try not to complain to my husband about the lack of good tea. :) maybe you could bring your own matcha a stri it into your water next time. :)
I don’t understand the reason for this either. Whenever I go to a restaurant, especially Japanese, I ask what kind of tea they have. All they end up having is cheap teabag tea, even at the Japanese places. But I’m pretty sure its a south florida thing because no one cares about tea here.
wow that sounds terrible! At least when you get home you can make yourself a good cup of tea :D
Yes it was suprising. Thank you for the information on the cloudiness. That makes me feel a little better. The cup was so scalding hot, I threw some ice from my water in it. That slightly improved the taste but not by much. The bad part is they had really good food, so I know my daughter will want to go back. I guess I could take my own tea. She really would think I was a snob then. Lol
Don’t think of it as being a snob, think of it as knowing what you want and not be willing to pay for something you don’t want. I bet you wouldn’t want them to use canned vegetables for your dinner-or a syrup instead of real fruit in a smoothie. Nothing wrong with asking beforehand. I ask questions about the tea at a new restaurant and if they don’t know or the answers don’t work for me, I just get water and have a nice cup of tea when I get home. Gives me something to look forward to.
However, you are right, it is disheartening when an otherwise quality restaurant (especially Asian)doesn’t know or doesn’t care to do tea right.
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