Holiday Tea at Urban Tea

After a less than stellar visit for Moon Festival Tea Service, I was invited to come back and try their Holiday Tea service. I had been to Urban Tea Merchant before with my mom and had an amazing experience, I was hoping for a repeat of that today. As we were waiting to be seated, we took a look at the new items in their retail section.
As a fan of Earl Grey tea, I was delighted to see this version, Chocolate Earl Grey tea made by TWG. Opening the tin, the chocolate smell is hidden behind the smell of the tea. Take a second sniff and you'll know what I mean. 
Another tea offering for the holiday season is their Red Christmas, a rooibos tea with strong hints of hisbiscus and clementine, truly bringing the scents of the holidays to life! 
Another offering for the season is the Noel Noel tea, a black tea with some white tea buds. The flavours are bold and it's a great after dinner drink. These teas are great for the people in your life who have everything, as it invites them to relax, take a break and truly enjoy the holidays. 
And if you don't know what teas to get for your friends, you can always opt to get them a teapot instead. Urban Tea Merchant has a wide selection of them, some traditional and some bordering on whimsical, like the one shown above. 

If you are not in the food for a full tea service, you can drop by and purchase a macaroon or two...prettily displayed here.
We started off with a Red Christmas infused Prosecco Cocktail (you can upgrade to a flute of Veuve Clicquot instead). The flavours of the tea does come through and you can clearly taste it over the sweet prosecco.
We also got some Petit-Chou to start accompanied with their “Weekend in St Tropez” butter, which had a light touch of citrus. The pastries are fluffy and really light, and not oily at all.  The best thing is to pull one open and put a generous pat of the butter inside.

We got these huge tins of teas to help us pick out the tea that we wanted. I went with the White Christmas, which I fell in love with when I first smelled it. According to their website, the tea is made from Precious Yin Zhen (silver needles) blended with orange peel, hibiscus and spices. This was delightful and I loved how they brewed this tea in a clear glass pot, so you can really appreciate the golden colours of the tea.

And here is our Holiday Tea Service, three layers of savoury and sweets!

The bottom tier is filled with sandwiches and crostinis. There are a total of eight items, ranging from a Yam Puree Pastry Puff, a Crostini topped with Boursin Cheese and a “Singapore Breakfast Tea” Sesame Crusted Seared Ahi, and two variations of the “Red Christmas Tea” Turkey Tea Sandwiches, complete with cranberry sauce and dijon mustard. These are paired with the cornichons you see in the middle.
Highlights for me included the Smoked Salmon Ribbon with the Ponzu Jelly strip. The salmon was thinly sliced and served on top a thin slice of rye. The ponzu jelly is all you need to flavour the salmon.
The Roast Beef Double Decker is a new item for me, and I loved the medium rare roast beef. Nothing is worse than overcooked roast beef. The extra layer of bread is probably not necessary, but it does offer a visual difference from the other tea sandwiches.
And the standard that comes with almost every tea service, the “Lapsang Souchong Tea” Chicken Salad Cone. Although I've always found the cone to be a bit too sweet, the chicken salad is solidly savoury and the cone is filled to the brim with with it. I remember when it used to be served in little petit chou cups but it's just as tasty as ever.
  The next tier is filled with Scones, little creme brulee Chocolate Cups as well as a delightful Gingerbread Cake with a Red Christmas Tea icing.  The Devonshire cream is made in house and a little terrine of strawberry jam complements the sones. I loved the poinsettia made from fondant and the holly decoration made with pomegranate seeds and a sprig of mint. How pretty! My favourite was the cake with the scones a close second.  
On the top tier, there are lots of Seasonal Fruits, such as gooseberies, pineapple, starfruit and even persimmon. The Chevron Strawberries are a classic, we also have Petit Fours, Macaroons and the Chocolate Tea Truffles rounding out the plate. 

Take Note:

• The staff are very knowledgeable and passionate about the teas
• Breathe deeply when opening the tins of teas, you'll get more out of it
• Not sure if you want milk or not? Ask the staff and let them guide you. 

High Tea Asian Style at Urban Tea Merchant

For a limited time only, Urban Tea Merchant is featuring a Moon Festival Tea Service for $38/person. The offer is in honour of the Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, celebrated this year on September 30. Mooncake is a feature of the festivities, as are brightly coloured lanterns, both of which are present at Urban Tea Merchant. As with all their tea services, we start off with a martini glass full of Petit-Chou, little cream puffs served with a tea-infused butter, specifically, today, we have the "Weekend in St. Tropez" butter. And you can't have high tea without tea. I loved the monogrammed teapot, sugar and teacup. It does make one feel rather civilized. The tea is brewed for you before it comes to your table, so there aren't actually any tea leaves in the teapot. This ensures that the tea doesn't "oversteep". Once you run out of tea, feel free to ask one of the staff to brew you another pot. 
To round out our tea, we asked for Splenda (or any sugar substitute) and was told that they didn't have any. Not sure if they ran out, or if they don't stock it at all...good thing we had our own! We also asked for both milk and cream for our two teas. The waiter came back with a mini-pitcher of hot milk, but no cream. So we asked him for the cream, which he brought back cold. We asked him if he could heat it up for us so it doesn't cool the tea. And I swear to goodness, his response was "well, if you pour just a little bit of cream into the hot tea, it should be fine." I flipped (just a little) and asked him if it was "possible" to heat the cream, to which he replied yes, and skulked away to heat it. Really, was that so hard? Anyways, with the tea made, we settled in and waited for the actual Moon Festival Tea Service, and we waited so more. After about 15 minutes, it finally arrived. What struck me first was the fact that this wasn't a tiered tea service, like the ones that I was normally used to, like my last visit. It's weird to see savouries and sweets side by side. Inside the steamer basket was the Weekend in Hong Kong Tea Pork Dumplings. Don't be alarmed by the colours of the dumplings, these are just your regular pork dumplings from a Shanghainese place. The pork filling was good, and mixed with a lot of diced vegetables. What was not good was the skin. It was way too thick and very out of place at a high tea service. The dough was just too thinck, perhaps that was the only way the food colouring would show up? In any case, this is the equivalent of leaving the crusts on a cucumber and watercress tea sandwich, it's not awful, but it's just not elegant enough for high tea. Next we tried the Smoked Salmon Ribbon with Ponzu Jelly, and this was much better. I loved the attention to detail as they laid three thin slices of smoked salmon together in a way to imitate a ribbon. The ponzu jelly was salty enough and matched the salmon well, giving it a nice flavour. Another winner was the Miso-Maple Glazed Sablefish served in a butter lettuce cup. The crispy shreds of wonton-like skins was a great contrast to the juiciness of the sablefish and the tenderness of butter lettuce. And the marinade for the sablefish really came through, you could definitely taste the miso.   The last savoury bite we tried was the Lapsang Souchong Tea Chicken Salad Cone. The chicken salad is from their regular tea service, so I've had it many times. The chicken is lightly mixed with some mayo and then dropped into a waffle cone with some more butter lettuce. The lettuce and chicken salad were good one their own, but what where they thinking putting a savoury chicken salad into a sweet waffle cone?! I ended up eating the salad and leaving the cone, along with it's silvery wrapper. The flavour combination was just too weird for me.   And this is the Moonlight Mooncake we picked, which according to our waiter, was supposed to be a strawberry and lotus cake. Of the four cakes he described to us, none of them had a salty egg yolk, a very traditional filling. So imagine my surprise when I went back to the Urban Tea's website and found out that they do indeed offer this traditional version, called the Constellation. See all their flavours here.  So instead, we got the Moonlight Mooncake, a filled with lotus paste infused with Silver Moon Tea and mixed  with wild berries. This was so dry I had to drink a cup of tea to wash down one sliver. I don't blame the waiter for this erroneous description of the cake, I blame myself for not doing research prior, rather than later. sI cannot forget the rest of the sweets we had with our Tea Service, namely, from left to right, a signature tea truffle, assorted seasonal fruit atop a Silver Moon Tea infused watermelon strip with a chevron strawberry.
Take Note:

• Some of the staff are very helpful, some are not (avoid the waiter with the French accent)
• The teas are brewed to order so expect a little bit of a wait
• They won't offer to change plates when you move from savoury to sweet, so ask for fresh plates

Tea with Mommy

Wow, I just realized, I eat out with my mom a lot! Here is another in the continuing saga of Brunch with Mom. This time, I dragged her to The Urban Tea Merchant on Alberni.

We had their traditional high tea. The first course was their jasmine tea, but served chilled, in champagne flutes. Accompanying the tea were some sliced fresh strawberries, also soaked with some jasmine tea.

Here is the tray as it arrives...tiers of food and my pot of tea. See the pot on the right of the tiers, next to my mom's tea? That is a pot of steamed frothy milk! That way, your tea won't get cold...love it!

Here is one of the two savory tiers. Clockwise from the top, we haved the smoked salmon on rye with some cream cheese and capers, the endive with blue cheese and candiet walnut, the three cups were filled with chicken salad, the cucumber and watercress crustless sandwich, as  the egg salad on whole wheat bread.

The second tier was a combination of savory and sweet. The flakey croissants and the scones were perfect for the jam and clotted cream. We also got mini quiches, filled with asparagus chunks.

Alas, we were so full with the first two tiers that we didn't even have room for dessert! Chocolate strawberries, macaroons, chocolate gelee, mini-donuts, and a cookie too. Too much food.

See how nicely the frothy milk goes with the tea? So decadent.

Since my mom and I were splitting everything, here is my portion of the cucumber and watercress sandwich. Soft bread, buttered, and thin sliced of cucumber and a few leaves of watercress. So simply, but so good!

Here are the other portions of my lunch. The smoked salmon was good, both the chicken and egg salad were nice, not to heavy with the mayo.

I recently also had lunch at the Hotel Vancouver with my BFF, and I would have to say...that was better. This was good, but the little extras you get at Hotel Vancouver does elevate the experience. But then again, you do pay more for the privilege.
Have you tried both? What do you think?