Tea At Cassia

Some Chinese restaurants in Singapore do serve up decent tea. It'll never be of the quality I desire though. Sigh. Why must tea at restaurants suck so bad? It's like an afterthought. Price points and economies of scale. And restaurants in Singapore are only slowly making the move to not kill the tea leaves by over-steeping them in a pot. I really hate that bitter astringency after the second cup of tea. What I can do, is to control that by requesting them to remove the tea leaves from the strainer, or remove the filter packet from the pot it's floating in. Or do it myself the moment the teapot reaches the table.

I like the food at Cassia because of its contemporary take on traditional Chinese food. They use very little oil too. As a result, the flavors come out lighter and gentler, which fit my tastebuds. In fact, it's probably my to-go restaurant this year. Heh. Thankfully, their tea menu has improved too, and currently, their batch of tea leaves sourced from Gryphon Tea Company have got some lovely brews. Their batches of loose leaf Imperial Pu'er (tips) and Shi Feng Long Jing (Lion's Peak Dragonwell, 狮峰龙井, green tea) were decent, once I pulled the filter bags out of the teapots to prevent oversteeping. Of course the water temperature is too high for my liking when it comes to brewing green tea, but well, this is a restaurant, I make do.

On each visit, I tend to order a minimum of three types of teas. A large table is needed for all the gaiwans to either hold tea or filter packets of loose leaves. Lots of vessels used, even more demands made. Please don't do this at the restaurants or cafes you aren't familiar with. These are restaurants, not teahouses per se. They're not obliged to be that nice. Cassia is very kind to indulge me in masak masak time and again.

By the way, that's not my clay teapot in the photo. It belongs to the restaurant. (If you must know, the clay teapot is from Taiwan's Lin's Ceramics. I peeked at the bottom to see its maker's stamp) I'm not so crazy as to bring out tea paraphernalia to restaurants. That would be too bratty!