Rituals

One of the things I miss about wine is all the rituals that go with it.

The wine lists, the wine chat, the waiter showing you the label, the sound of the cork popping out of the bottle, the swirling, the sniffing, the sipping. The glasses, the corkscrews, the bottle stoppers, the decanters.

You just can't do all that stuff with Diet Coke, can you?

After many months, I manage perfectly happily without the wine rituals at home, but whenever I go out to a restaurant, I feel like there's something missing. 

I get a bit edgy - scratchy. I don't know what to do with my hands. So I end up eating really quickly, then I sit there thinking now what?

Well, I have now found a solution to this problem of the missing ritual and the jobless hands:

Tea.

I'm afraid it only works in some restaurants, specifically Chinese, Thai or Japanese, but since everything in London is going 'Asian Fusion', that's not too much of a problem.

I've read up a bit on tea rituals. Look at this, from Yauatcha.com:

 

In the East – China, India and Japan specifically – the variety of teas have evolved naturally over the years, much like wines have evolved in the West. There are many similarities between tea and wine: each has its own unique aroma, texture and taste.

When pairing wine and food, you must consider carefully the wine’s characteristics in order to correctly match with the smells, flavours and textures of the food. This same process can be applied to tea and food pairing.

The Chinese have been drinking tea with food for thousands of years, and a good Chinese restaurant will have up to around forty different teas to chose from.

And the great thing about drinking tea with your food is it involves just as much ritual as drinking wine.

They bring your tea in a diddy little tea pot on a tray, with a doll's house size tea cup. This means that you have to keep pouring your tea from your little pot into your teeny cup, which you sip from slowly. Happy hands!

I was reading a post on Soberistas from a poor lady who'd been out to a fancy restaurant with her husband. She ordered an alcohol free beer. The snooty waiter asked her to repeat the order three times, then - after pouring the beer - walked off muttering 'classy' under his breath.

What a tosser!

But you know what? If you order green tea, jasmine tea, white tea - whatever - in a Chinese restaurant, the waiter (presuming they're Chinese) looks at you with respect. You can see them thinking Finally! A westerner who knows what you should be drinking with this food!

Try it - it's awesome.

So, I was drinking green tea in a Thai restaurant with Mr SM and another couple (who were all drinking wine, obvs). We hadn't seen them since a party a few weeks back. The other chap confessed that he remembered nothing after the liqueurs came round after dinner.

I told him about the silly dancing. And then about his (very funny) rant to a mutual friend about her choice of schools for her child. (I reassured him that she'll have no memory of the rant either).

His wife told us about pleading with the taxi driver to take them home, promising he wouldn't vomit, then sticking his head out of the window all the way home.

So that's three new things for Chinese New Year:

(1) Tea with food
(2) Being able to remember an entire party
(3) Being 'the sensible one.' Who knew?

Happy Friday!

Love SM x