The Cafe Jerk

Tea and coffee have been fighting a bloody war ever since coffee was invented by Jesus Christ in order to upstage his nemesis Christian Slater, who in 1996 – a mere 8 years beforehand – had invented tea in order to calm his nerves before starring in the poorly-received film Broken Arrow.

Even though tea is the world’s second most popular drink after water, one can’t help but feel that tea has been fighting a losing battle in recent years in Melbourne cafes. All this new-found passion for soy lattes, frappucinos, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak, coffee artists and babycinos (which are invariably ordered by sunhatted loser parents for their sunhatted loner kids) has only served to widen the chasm between the two heavyweights of the heated water beverage industry. Tea drinkers are forced to sit through the waiter’s explanation of the pet hates and the family tree of each particular coffee bean, and then when it comes to tea we are usually directed to a penciled scribble on the back of the menu saying something like “Earl Grey, English Breakfast, or Green Tea” usually from those clowns at Teadrop. And then when you somehow manage to get your head around the dizzying array of teas and pick something, you are treated to a leaky tin pot with a Twinings tea bad hanging out of it. And by the way, putting ‘Green Tea’ as an option is like putting ‘Coffee’ as the only coffee option on the menu.

If it wasn’t for that recent Kony 2012 campaign I would definitely say FML.

All I can say is, thank Christian Slater for Storm in a Teacup.

Storm in a Teacup is a cafe run by tea people for tea people.

What follows is me getting a bit mathematical on yo ass (according to The Wire, that means ‘your bottom’).

Coffee wankers + Masterchef-watching baby boomers in fluoro glasses who like reading Epicure magazine = Tea squared.

Let me explain that to those of you unable to follow this NASA-esque equation in your head. Basically, it means:

Coffee wankers + Masterchef-watching baby boomers in fluoro glasses who like reading Epicure magazine = Tea squared.

For those slow-witted readers still shouting “But Cafe Jerk, that complicated addition bullshit still looks like an equation that Rainman and that little punk from Mercury Rising couldn’t solve!”, let me elaborate.

Basically, these groups have turned everyone into foodies (and no, the drink equivalent of foodies is not ‘drinkies’. ‘Drinkies’ are what 18 year old girls have on Friday night while trying on similar outfits and shouting ‘woooo’ ad nauseum). People don’t feel guilty anymore about ordering fancy stuff now, ie. fancy tea. Oh and the Tea Squared bit, I just like the name Tea Squared. It sounded like an rebellious character’s name on an early 2000′s TV show written by, and for, white people.

Tea Squared causing trouble

You get a different feeling when you walk into Storm in a Teacup, and I think most of it comes from knowing you are among your own kind. Kind of like when white people go to Bridge Road. It is a similar feeling to that I described in my post on Cibi, actually. You automatically feel relaxed and at ease, which probably also has something to do with the lack of ridiculous banging and smashing that is apparently the by-product of a standard cup of coffee. And even though the place is small and new you don’t feel like the owner is watching your face for the slightest hint of enjoyment every time you take a bite of your food. Man is it awkward when that happens.

To highlight the difference between coffee drinkers and tea drinkers, here is what a cafe looks like when filled with coffee people.

"I said a touch of soy, you jerk!"

Here is what a cafe looks like when filled with tea people.

The food is actually pretty good here. My favourite is the rare roasted beef on light rye with Persian fetta, rocket and pickles. It was really, really…good. It was definitely one of the more gooder things on the menu. My dining partner, Eric the Discerning Llama with 90′s Hair, used the occasion to showcase his Frasier-esque sense of humour for the benefit of the waitress

"Rare roasted roast beef? For a minute I thought you were going to bring out some grain fed dry-aged 300 day rib eye LOL!"

Next up was the Tea eggs on toast with some sort of cranberry sauce / chilli jam. From what I can gather, tea eggs are pretty much eggs hard-boiled in tea, and they are pretty good. Tea, eggs and reading are 3 of my favourite things in the world, so I was pretty close to perfect happiness. All you need to do is throw in Norah Jones and an enjoyable half-day at Wet ‘n Wild and I would be in heaven.

I did take a photo of the menu but my damn photo app makes that photo sound every time I take a photo and so I am usually more focused on taking the photo at the exact time the music steps up in volume than I am on taking a good quality photo. So I can’t actually read the desciption of the dish too well. That sentence I wrote just before that last one actually contained 6 instances of the word ‘photo’. I have to admit it did feel a bit strange writing it, actually. Anyway, here are a couple of photos. This one is my impression of how Michael J Fox would take a photo of the dish, which also happens to coincide with a waitress walking past me.

This one is what a normal photo of the dish looks like

This one is what it looks like when Eric the Discerning Llama with 90′s Hair decided to survey his eggs from a different angle. One could argue that an egg looks much the same from every angle, and they would be right.

This is what it looked like when Eric cut into his eggs and arranged them on his toast so that he could control the flavours of each of his bites. I couldn’t help but laugh when the eggs fell off the bread after every bite.

The last dish we ate was the free range chicken terrine with an orange and beetroot something (shit menu photo again, I truly apologise) & rocket on organic sourdough. It was wrapped in vine leaves and dwarfed by the mountain of bread accompanying it. I gotta say, this wasn’t my favourite but it was still pretty tasty. I have never been to a place where I am given too much bread, if anything I try to fashion a bread-like substitute from whatever is left from my plate, but I think I probably was given too much bread this time. It’s like when you have 2 dates on the same night, it’s a good problem to have.

"The main difference, I find, between this dish and a dolmade is that inside the vine leaves is a chicken terrine, and not rice"

This is a tea palace and therefore I should make a quick note on the tea. They do have some delicious – and rare – teas here and they are too numerous to mention. Their iced genmai cha is one of the better things in this world to drink on a hot day. I would say though that if you order green tea from cafes then you will have your world rocked by ordering some here. Firstly, the quality of tea here is on a different plane. Mainly, though, is the fact that they actually brew their tea at the right temperature. At pretty much every cafe you go to they put the green tea in boiling water as if it were black tea, and it results in some bitter garbage. It should be steeped in slightly less than boiling water. I still can’t believe that no cafes get that right. You pretty much burn all the subtleties out of the tea and quite frankly, it angers me slightly more than it should.

I only have one small issue with Storm in a Teacup with regards to their tea, which will probably put me in hot water with the tea community (just a little LOL for you). I am not a huge fan of tea cups that are too dark inside to see the colour and/or strength of the tea it holds. Especially if it is a black tea and you need to know how much milk to add to it. That is my only qualm. I love that word. It is my go-to scrabble word when I am stuck with a Q.

I suggest you throw your piping hot espresso in your local barista’s face and walk into Storm in a Teacup and embrace the tea drinker way of life, and if you don’t like it then you can always throw your green tea at the people who work here. But the joke will be on you fools, because its slightly-less-than-boiling water will give them second degree burns at worst.