Trade your ‘double-double’ for a relaxing cup of tea
In a world in which the ‘double-double’ rules, sipping a cup of tea can seem terribly quaint. But the brew – steeped in history, infused with gentility – is worth lingering over.
on December 7, 2014 -
Susan Tomporowski, left, and Meg Lenz enjoy
afternoon tea at the Asa Ransom House in Clarence, which is offered by
reservation every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday throughout the year
(except for January). Also provided: a selection of finger sandwiches
and fruit garnish, scones with jam and Devonshire cream and elegant
cakes and pastries. Photos by Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News
""""""""""""""""""""""When she graduated from college in 1981, Jan Tyson made a bold move that would change her life.
“I taught myself to drink tea,” she said. “Because I figured I was an adult then, and I needed a hot beverage. I like the smell of coffee grounds, and I don’t mind the smell of it being brewed. But it’s too bitter for me, and I didn’t want to have to put cream or sugar in it. I tried it several times, and I don’t like it, I thought, ‘I’ll drink tea.’ ”
Not easy."""""""""""""""""""""""""
""""""""""""""""""""""When she graduated from college in 1981, Jan Tyson made a bold move that would change her life.
“I taught myself to drink tea,” she said. “Because I figured I was an adult then, and I needed a hot beverage. I like the smell of coffee grounds, and I don’t mind the smell of it being brewed. But it’s too bitter for me, and I didn’t want to have to put cream or sugar in it. I tried it several times, and I don’t like it, I thought, ‘I’ll drink tea.’ ”
Not easy."""""""""""""""""""""""""
Asa
Ransom House has Afternoon Tea every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday
through ought the year (except for January) by reservation from 1-4 p.m.
They provide a selection of finger sandwiches and fruit garnish,
scones with jam and Devonshire cream, elegant cakes and pastries. Photo
taken, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)
~~~~~~Our nation was founded on tea. It was the drink
of the British settlers, so essential that taxes on it led to the
Boston Tea Party. But now, the country runs on coffee.
Shoppers barrel through Wegmans with their lattes by their side. Cars line up at Dunkin’ Donuts and Tim Hortons. Buffalo, home to descendants of immigrants from Germany, Poland and Italy, is especially coffee-centric.
What’s a tea drinker to do?
Jan Ferington, who like Tyson is a tea drinker, admits she sometimes feels out in the cold.
“When you’re sitting around the table, and they come around with the coffee pot, it’s kind of weird,” explained Ferington, who is co-host, with restaurateur Russell Salvatore, of Channel 7’s “Come Dine With Me.”
“People say, ‘You don’t drink coffee?’ ” she lamented. “It’s just such a universal thing.”
Tyson lives in the genteel village of Kenmore and works for the Presbyterian Church, a denomination that, with its Scottish origins, must be home to more than a few tea drinkers. But she, too, often feels marginalized.
“Tim Hortons and McDonald’s, the water they use generally has run through the coffee machine,” she said. “Or it’s in a carafe that has had coffee in it. Some places I won’t drink tea because the water is coffee-flavored. I have the issue at church. Sometimes they put the water (for tea) in a carafe where they had coffee. They have good tea bags, but the water’s not good.”
She has learned to be patient.
“It annoys me a little bit,” she admitted. “But I kind of go with the flow.”
Tea stands for civilization. It harkens back to the days of the old British Empire.
Coffee is superhero movies. Tea is Downton Abbey. Coffee is get up and go. Tea is sit down and rest. Coffee is ambition. Tea is relaxation.
A tea drinker is, in a small way, a crusader against the rush and bustle of the world.
“ ‘Let’s go out for some tea’ has a different connotation, much more sophisticated, not as casual, very elegant,” Ferington said. “Tea is much slower and relaxed.”
Tea has an entirely different set of accoutrements. There is the obligatory steeping time, during which you do nothing. The typical teapot is made to share. British afternoon tea and Chinese tea ceremonies are designed for peaceful civility.
“Keep Calm with Tea This Holiday Season,” said an email from Celestial Seasonings. The message went on to say soothingly: “Tea’s unique ability to relax and refresh is welcomed a little more than usual during this hectic season.”
Celestial Seasonings, dating from the hippieish year of 1969, is known for its flowery packaging and philosophical quotes. Other brands build on a more British sense of calm. Twinings emphasizes its 300-year history. It still occupies the same tiny storefront in London that it had when it was founded, in 1706. Tetley dates to 1820, Lipton to 1871.
Ron Link grew up on Red Rose, an august Canadian brand established in 1890.
“I came from kind of a privileged family, and one of the things we used to do without thinking a lot about it, we’d always serve tea around dinner time,” said Link, a legal business consultant who lives in Amherst. “We’d have a cup in the morning, a cup in the evening. I got to drinking it as a young boy. I wouldn’t think about it other than that I liked it. I didn’t like coffee.
“My grandfather was president of Buffalo Savings Bank when I was little. His name was Raymond Eisenhardt. He would have meetings at the Buffalo Club, and we would be taught to be very proper, even at 5 or 6 or 7. You had to drink tea, you had to wear a blazer. It sort of taught you how to live like a gentleman,” he said.
Kids typically rebel in college, and Link was no exception.
“In college, I started drinking coffee,” he confessed. “I was a kind of caffeine achiever, thinking benefits of caffeine would help me study.”
Later, though, his love for tea returned. It intensified in the last year with his interest in Asian martial arts and Chinese medicine, interests he pursues at Gold Summit Martial Arts Institute.
“It expanded my awareness of tea and the benefits of drinking tea,” said Link, who loves to expound at length, in a tea drinker’s unhurried manner, on tea’s healthfulness. “We do berry tea after workouts. Goji berry is the tea Master Markle recommends, with chrysanthemum.” Master Markle is his teacher, Erin Markle.
Link also lingers over the occasional cup of tea at Barnes & Noble. The ratio of coffee to tea there, he reckoned, is 60 percent coffee, 40 percent tea – a decent proportion, given reality. In the bookstore cafe, as in the martial arts studio, he feels he is in like-minded company.
“A lot of people who are at Barnes & Noble are UB students, and a lot of them are foreign,” he pointed out. “A lot of them drink tea as opposed to coffee. It’s a cultural thing, no question about it.
“Coffee is associated with speed and quickness,” he reflected. “It has to do with the speed of our culture in the West. People aren’t used to doing things like meditating. It’s all about how fast you can do things, how quickly you can get your goals accomplished. It’s different from the process of tea, where you can sit and relax.”
Teavana, the tea emporium in the Walden Galleria, invites visitors to linger. The store is generous with tastes. There is a chocolate tea like hot chocolate. TeaLeafs on Main Street in Williamsville has adopted the comforting slogan: “A cup of tea makes everything better.”
Tea Leaf Cafe in Maple Ridge Plaza declares: “Call us crazy, but we believe everyone deserves a bit of TLC.” At the White Linen Tea House in Wheatfield, owner Linda Kloch offers more than 100 varieties and offers a full afternoon tea service every day except Wednesday, in addition to a Mini Tea for children. The restaurant even gives you a timer with your tea, to make sure you give it the right time to steep.
The Asa Ransom House serves afternoon tea by reservation on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons. It is held in the plush Ransom Room, with floral wallpaper and a flaming hearth.
“To begin, you are presented with a choice of Harney & Sons teas, along with a pot of hot water,” is how the inn describes the ritual. “Shortly after you’ve enjoyed your first sips of tea, a tiered tray of scones, sandwiches and cakes arrives at your table. Savory sandwiches may include cucumber, chicken salad and tuna. Cheesecake, chocolate cake, cookies and fruit complete the experience, which usually lasts between 1 or 2 hours.”
Tea is beginning to encroach on coffee territory. The Tim Hortons in the new HarborCenter has a prominent tea display.
“I love the Orange Cat. It’s in Lewiston,” said Jan Ferington. “They make the tea for you, and they have these great scones. I think they do coffee too.”
Her uncertainty on this point shows the extent to which the cafe caters to tea drinkers: Its full name is the Orange Cat Coffee Co. “But they have all these teas against a wall,” Ferington said. “It’s this really cool little house.”
The Pillars, a restored mansion in Albion, recently initiated an afternoon tea. Owner Tony McMurtrie restored the once run-down mansion with help from relatives from his native Scotland. Now, he is restoring the tea tradition.
Luxury is on the menu. The Pillars also has a baby-grand piano. The place lends itself so well to retro luxe that it plays host to an annual Titanic Dinner, where guests can imagine they are passengers on the doomed ocean liner.
Jan Tyson has noticed that tea drinkers are catered to a little more now than they once were.
“Some of the nicer restaurants, the more expensive ones I don’t go to that often, they have the nice display case with the six or eight or even 12 flavors of tea,” she said. “You get a range of flavors instead of just black tea or decaf.
“I think they’re becoming more accommodating to tea drinkers. When they come around at banquets with pots of coffee, I’ll ask for tea, and there will be a couple of people at the table who tell me, thanks for asking, that they wouldn’t have thought of it. People are gracious about it. They don’t look at me funny anymore when I ask for tea.”
“I have seen it change in the last 20 years. It’s become a lot easier to become a tea drinker.”
Link laughs about the song “T.U.S.A.,” by the band Masters of Reality. “The drummer, Ginger Baker, is Scottish, and he jokes about drinking tea in U.S.,” he said. “It’s quite funny, has to do with the tradition of making a proper cup of tea. That’s one thing too that you learn when you drink the tea at Gold Summit. The water is so hot, it’s hard to hold the cup.”
“One thing in this country that really bothers me/Is the inability of Yanks to make a good cup of tea,” the song begins, as Baker plays the kind of uncompromising tattoo you might hear accompanying bagpipes.
They bring you a cup with a lemon slice
And an unopened tea bag beside it (how nice)
And a pot of water and it may be hot
But boiling it isn’t so tea you have not
The song dates to 1992, but recent comments on the YouTube video suggest that things have not improved much since then.
“Love it!” reads one. “ When I first came to live in U.S.A. 20 years ago, my mission was to teach Americans how to make a cup of tea. I failed. Totally. Now I am trying to bring peace between Palestine and Israel and it is so much easier.”
Tea drinkers, though, are an accepting lot, content with small victories.
“I do like restaurants who have their little tin carafes, that they have hot water in,” said Jan Tyson. “Then I feel like a full person, because they usually put coffee on the table too.
“It makes me think, ‘Yes, I matter.’ ”
email: mkunz@buffnews.com~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shoppers barrel through Wegmans with their lattes by their side. Cars line up at Dunkin’ Donuts and Tim Hortons. Buffalo, home to descendants of immigrants from Germany, Poland and Italy, is especially coffee-centric.
What’s a tea drinker to do?
Jan Ferington, who like Tyson is a tea drinker, admits she sometimes feels out in the cold.
“When you’re sitting around the table, and they come around with the coffee pot, it’s kind of weird,” explained Ferington, who is co-host, with restaurateur Russell Salvatore, of Channel 7’s “Come Dine With Me.”
“People say, ‘You don’t drink coffee?’ ” she lamented. “It’s just such a universal thing.”
Tyson lives in the genteel village of Kenmore and works for the Presbyterian Church, a denomination that, with its Scottish origins, must be home to more than a few tea drinkers. But she, too, often feels marginalized.
“Tim Hortons and McDonald’s, the water they use generally has run through the coffee machine,” she said. “Or it’s in a carafe that has had coffee in it. Some places I won’t drink tea because the water is coffee-flavored. I have the issue at church. Sometimes they put the water (for tea) in a carafe where they had coffee. They have good tea bags, but the water’s not good.”
She has learned to be patient.
“It annoys me a little bit,” she admitted. “But I kind of go with the flow.”
‘Keep Calm with Tea’
Her patience illustrates the civilized, easygoing nature of tea.Tea stands for civilization. It harkens back to the days of the old British Empire.
Coffee is superhero movies. Tea is Downton Abbey. Coffee is get up and go. Tea is sit down and rest. Coffee is ambition. Tea is relaxation.
A tea drinker is, in a small way, a crusader against the rush and bustle of the world.
“ ‘Let’s go out for some tea’ has a different connotation, much more sophisticated, not as casual, very elegant,” Ferington said. “Tea is much slower and relaxed.”
Tea has an entirely different set of accoutrements. There is the obligatory steeping time, during which you do nothing. The typical teapot is made to share. British afternoon tea and Chinese tea ceremonies are designed for peaceful civility.
“Keep Calm with Tea This Holiday Season,” said an email from Celestial Seasonings. The message went on to say soothingly: “Tea’s unique ability to relax and refresh is welcomed a little more than usual during this hectic season.”
Celestial Seasonings, dating from the hippieish year of 1969, is known for its flowery packaging and philosophical quotes. Other brands build on a more British sense of calm. Twinings emphasizes its 300-year history. It still occupies the same tiny storefront in London that it had when it was founded, in 1706. Tetley dates to 1820, Lipton to 1871.
Ron Link grew up on Red Rose, an august Canadian brand established in 1890.
“I came from kind of a privileged family, and one of the things we used to do without thinking a lot about it, we’d always serve tea around dinner time,” said Link, a legal business consultant who lives in Amherst. “We’d have a cup in the morning, a cup in the evening. I got to drinking it as a young boy. I wouldn’t think about it other than that I liked it. I didn’t like coffee.
“My grandfather was president of Buffalo Savings Bank when I was little. His name was Raymond Eisenhardt. He would have meetings at the Buffalo Club, and we would be taught to be very proper, even at 5 or 6 or 7. You had to drink tea, you had to wear a blazer. It sort of taught you how to live like a gentleman,” he said.
Kids typically rebel in college, and Link was no exception.
“In college, I started drinking coffee,” he confessed. “I was a kind of caffeine achiever, thinking benefits of caffeine would help me study.”
Later, though, his love for tea returned. It intensified in the last year with his interest in Asian martial arts and Chinese medicine, interests he pursues at Gold Summit Martial Arts Institute.
“It expanded my awareness of tea and the benefits of drinking tea,” said Link, who loves to expound at length, in a tea drinker’s unhurried manner, on tea’s healthfulness. “We do berry tea after workouts. Goji berry is the tea Master Markle recommends, with chrysanthemum.” Master Markle is his teacher, Erin Markle.
Link also lingers over the occasional cup of tea at Barnes & Noble. The ratio of coffee to tea there, he reckoned, is 60 percent coffee, 40 percent tea – a decent proportion, given reality. In the bookstore cafe, as in the martial arts studio, he feels he is in like-minded company.
“A lot of people who are at Barnes & Noble are UB students, and a lot of them are foreign,” he pointed out. “A lot of them drink tea as opposed to coffee. It’s a cultural thing, no question about it.
“Coffee is associated with speed and quickness,” he reflected. “It has to do with the speed of our culture in the West. People aren’t used to doing things like meditating. It’s all about how fast you can do things, how quickly you can get your goals accomplished. It’s different from the process of tea, where you can sit and relax.”
An invitation to linger
Tea places and tea accoutrements tend to invite leisure.Teavana, the tea emporium in the Walden Galleria, invites visitors to linger. The store is generous with tastes. There is a chocolate tea like hot chocolate. TeaLeafs on Main Street in Williamsville has adopted the comforting slogan: “A cup of tea makes everything better.”
Tea Leaf Cafe in Maple Ridge Plaza declares: “Call us crazy, but we believe everyone deserves a bit of TLC.” At the White Linen Tea House in Wheatfield, owner Linda Kloch offers more than 100 varieties and offers a full afternoon tea service every day except Wednesday, in addition to a Mini Tea for children. The restaurant even gives you a timer with your tea, to make sure you give it the right time to steep.
The Asa Ransom House serves afternoon tea by reservation on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons. It is held in the plush Ransom Room, with floral wallpaper and a flaming hearth.
“To begin, you are presented with a choice of Harney & Sons teas, along with a pot of hot water,” is how the inn describes the ritual. “Shortly after you’ve enjoyed your first sips of tea, a tiered tray of scones, sandwiches and cakes arrives at your table. Savory sandwiches may include cucumber, chicken salad and tuna. Cheesecake, chocolate cake, cookies and fruit complete the experience, which usually lasts between 1 or 2 hours.”
Tea is beginning to encroach on coffee territory. The Tim Hortons in the new HarborCenter has a prominent tea display.
“I love the Orange Cat. It’s in Lewiston,” said Jan Ferington. “They make the tea for you, and they have these great scones. I think they do coffee too.”
Her uncertainty on this point shows the extent to which the cafe caters to tea drinkers: Its full name is the Orange Cat Coffee Co. “But they have all these teas against a wall,” Ferington said. “It’s this really cool little house.”
The Pillars, a restored mansion in Albion, recently initiated an afternoon tea. Owner Tony McMurtrie restored the once run-down mansion with help from relatives from his native Scotland. Now, he is restoring the tea tradition.
Luxury is on the menu. The Pillars also has a baby-grand piano. The place lends itself so well to retro luxe that it plays host to an annual Titanic Dinner, where guests can imagine they are passengers on the doomed ocean liner.
Jan Tyson has noticed that tea drinkers are catered to a little more now than they once were.
“Some of the nicer restaurants, the more expensive ones I don’t go to that often, they have the nice display case with the six or eight or even 12 flavors of tea,” she said. “You get a range of flavors instead of just black tea or decaf.
“I think they’re becoming more accommodating to tea drinkers. When they come around at banquets with pots of coffee, I’ll ask for tea, and there will be a couple of people at the table who tell me, thanks for asking, that they wouldn’t have thought of it. People are gracious about it. They don’t look at me funny anymore when I ask for tea.”
“I have seen it change in the last 20 years. It’s become a lot easier to become a tea drinker.”
‘Tea you have not’
Which isn’t to say there’s not a distance to go.Link laughs about the song “T.U.S.A.,” by the band Masters of Reality. “The drummer, Ginger Baker, is Scottish, and he jokes about drinking tea in U.S.,” he said. “It’s quite funny, has to do with the tradition of making a proper cup of tea. That’s one thing too that you learn when you drink the tea at Gold Summit. The water is so hot, it’s hard to hold the cup.”
“One thing in this country that really bothers me/Is the inability of Yanks to make a good cup of tea,” the song begins, as Baker plays the kind of uncompromising tattoo you might hear accompanying bagpipes.
They bring you a cup with a lemon slice
And an unopened tea bag beside it (how nice)
And a pot of water and it may be hot
But boiling it isn’t so tea you have not
The song dates to 1992, but recent comments on the YouTube video suggest that things have not improved much since then.
“Love it!” reads one. “ When I first came to live in U.S.A. 20 years ago, my mission was to teach Americans how to make a cup of tea. I failed. Totally. Now I am trying to bring peace between Palestine and Israel and it is so much easier.”
Tea drinkers, though, are an accepting lot, content with small victories.
“I do like restaurants who have their little tin carafes, that they have hot water in,” said Jan Tyson. “Then I feel like a full person, because they usually put coffee on the table too.
“It makes me think, ‘Yes, I matter.’ ”
email: mkunz@buffnews.com~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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