Tea as the hottest latest trend in Bangkok

This really is about tea as a local trend, and food trends in general.  A local tea acquaintance, the owner of the Seven Suns cafe, mentioned hosting a booth at a Matcha Mania event in the Paragon mall, arguably one of the two main malls in Bangkok.  I checked it out and it was well received; crowded, even.

lines at Matcha Mania

Matcha booths and shops are everywhere, edging into bubble tea's market share.  I'm not sure how an event theme really could ramp up the "mania" much but it did seem to.  I might have tried a Seven Suns matcha drink there but I did so not that long ago (which I wrote about here) and I wasn't into waiting in line.  I've been considering trying out hojicha soft serve for a very long time--it's around--but didn't finally get to that either.

menu board at the next booth over; it looked ok

that sausage (with a recipe for it here)

I didn't try any tea at all.  I'm not all that into matcha, except in ice cream, and eating a desert item right before dinner made no sense.  I had walked by a nice looking Northern Thai herb-spiced sausage on the way and bought some of that for dinner on the way out, along with sticky rice.

Other tea and food trends

I'm not a "trend" person.  I'm from a small town in North Western Pennsylvania, where time doesn't bother to cause changes in the normal sense.  I like it that I live in a part of Bangkok where the decades passing also doesn't change things much.  I wear plain clothes and drink plain, hot, traditional teas.  I suppose if one looks at the longest term some of those teas aren't traditional, since the story is that shou was invented in the 70s, and I drink a little of them, and I like tea style variations from places like Vietnam and Indonesia that probably didn't exist a decade or two ago.  But the general point is the same.


Related to transitions back in the States I feel like I might somehow completely become a stranger in my own country at some point, but visiting once in awhile helps offset that.  My wife and I moved to Bangkok from Honolulu a decade ago so that's plenty of time frame for changes to happen.  I was just back in PA over the Christmas holidays, and in Washington, DC, and NYC, with a very short stop in State College, where I first went to school (PSU).  All of those places probably lag a little compared to the West coast for transition pace but it was comforting to see it all about the same as I remembered.  Except NYC; I've only been there a few times, so it's not as familiar.

An online contact just mentioned a "cheese tea" trend that apparently became popular in China way back in May, mixing cream cheese into tea as a beverage, topped with a bit of sugar, salt, or some spicing to give it a twist.  I just saw a notice that I can get it here, but I'd be ok with never following up on that.  Oddly that online contact lives in Poland, and she cited a Polish tea vendor's Youtube video about how to make it yourself, I guess all typical of the world getting smaller.

at that mall; not exactly the same thing

As I was wandering that mall looking for that tea event a friend back in the US asked me by message if I'd tried a lighter form of Japanese cheesecake that is popular now, and my initial reaction was "of course not."  Then I remembered that my wife's cousin's wife is a baker, and she gave us a type of cake I wasn't familiar with over the weekend, so apparently I'd already been eating it for breakfast this week (Japanese cotton cheesecake, per her description).  It was nice.  There is more of running theme here than there might seem.

There is an emphasis on things being trendy in Bangkok.  I suppose it varies by where you go, and Paragon mall is a main place for that sort of thing.  That name seems to mean "exemplar" as much in the sense of exemplifying trends than relating to being an ideal mall.  I suppose it's nice though, to the extent that any is different from the others.


One local magazine covers updating preference shifts as well as any, BK Magazine, as in this post about 7 terrific Bangkok tea houses that are very serious about their cha.  Cha is Thai for tea too, for what that's worth.  The first three they mention are worth a look, which includes Seven Suns.  The two others I'm approving of are the old Chinatown cafe (Double Dogs), and the last a good place to spend $20 for small pot of tea, Peace Oriental.  I visited there once a couple of years ago, and it was ok, but I don't plan to ever go there again.


It's drifting off theme a bit but I'm in a FB foodies group here, even though I'm definitely not a foodie.  I cook; I guess that could count as partial credit.  They discuss restaurants more than novel food items, split between considering higher end places and debating who has the best burgers, pizza, Mexican, etc.  All the Mexican food I've tried here was somewhere between mediocre and awful but it would help to be a foodie, to visit restaurants a few times a week and explore further than I do.

The mall visit got me thinking more about trends, and that cheesecake.  Some looking around turned up ricotta cheese pancakes, and a Japanese tart version of cheesecake, and a place selling a hojicha flavored version of shaved ice.  Shaved ice is popular now, not the version from Hawaii, the fruit syrup flavored range, but the variation from Taiwan instead, more focused on fruit integration and use of condensed milk and other sauces.

It's not the same thing at all but I finally saw an I-Hop here, Thailand's first.  That's right, an International House of Pancakes (which I don't think was really all that international in the past).  It's strange to be mentioning low end breakfast places in the middle of discussing tea, desert trend themes, and foodie culture but it does connect.

not exactly nailing the updated diner theme

The common ground relates to the source of trends not always being so trendy where they are from.  A traditional Chinese tea shop or cafe would be a run of the mill thing in China, but in North-Western PA it would seem very exotic.  Who knows when they'll ever get a Thai restaurant back there but here it's grocery store complex food court fare.  Mexican and Italian food restaurants that go out of business due to lack of interest back in the States could potentially match the best related foods versions Bangkok has to offer.


Pancakes are sort of the same here; a bit exotic.  I was a little shocked and horrified that they didn't have bacon, sausage, or hash browns on that I-Hop menu, and I'm still a little rattled about it.  I was a vegetarian for about 17 years so I can take or leave meat more than most but it's still disrespectful to the theme of American breakfast.  It's downright un-American.  Somehow waffles are common here but french toast and pancakes not so much; I'm not sure how that worked out.  Sausage is common here but  Jimmy Dean-style breakfast links would be as out of place as dim sum or pho back in the Midwest (or som-tum, Thai papaya salad; you get the idea).

If this was going to circle back to tea it probably should have already.  Those recommended cafes work as a transition; the two new ones and one older version sum up what's going on in Bangkok.  TWG is on the list, and Twinings cafe might as well be, and Whittard I just walked by in Paragon.  High end commercial, traditional versions of tea aren't really of interest to me.  The one Japanese tea shop sounded nice, and that was about it.  People probably bought more matcha drinks at those booths in that mall event over the last ten days than traditional pots of tea at all of those other places combined over the same time frame, or maybe a factor of ten more.

I'm behind in trying different flavored ices

It seems odd to conclude that only matcha is even close to being the hottest latest trend in tea in Bangkok.  It'll be funny if "cheese tea" really takes off.



Good oolong or pu'er teas just don't seem to fit the mold of what catches on (or mould, for British people).  As with in the US better tea may just gradually ramp up for years until it finally really catches on, and if that seems to happen suddenly the reasons why will probably only make sense in retrospect.  

A Bangkok tea social at Seven Suns cafe

Han (the owner) making tea

There was a tea social event in Bangkok this weekend!  It was at Sevens Suns cafe in Ekamai.  It was great that the owner, Han Mei, decided to host an event, and provided tasting of some interesting, nice teas.  Turn-out could've been better (hard to draw crowds for tea-theme events, it seems) but the event itself was great.


Of course I reviewed that cafe not long ago, for the second time after an initial introduction, related to a renovation to add indoor cafe space to a previous outdoor seating environment.  It's very nice now, and air conditioned, which is sort of important given the typical hot weather here.  I could go on and on about their offerings, and Han's ideas about how tea awareness and demand might develop here (with more on that in the first post), or related to him having a background in traditional Chinese medicine, but the original intention is to keep this short.  Here is a Mei Leaf Youtube video (related to the China Life brand videos) with Han doing a tasting of a Thai oolong with his brother.  That video also covers background on how Thai teas relate to Chinese versions and other types.

many teas, and some infused alcohols

Han provided free tasting of several interesting tea types at that event:  a ginseng oolong, gaba oolong, Taiwanese Ruby black tea, Mi Lan Xiang Dan Cong oolong (the most common type, one that tastes floral, or in some cases like peach), a "Duck Shit" Ya Shi Dan Cong (a relatively trendy tea, although those peaks in specific type interest come and go), and a Tie Luo Han, one of the main Wuyi Yancha varieties, in this case a well-roasted example, as that type typically is.  The tasting wasn't structured as a sequential sampling flight, with lots of description and guided review, it was informal.  That worked really well given the people that attended mostly did  seem to have some background with tea, and it worked related to people coming and going.


Han also introduced some alcohols infused with tea, whisky, vodka, and gin, as I recall, and people tried tea cocktails.  I tasted one, the first tea cocktail I've ever tried, and it worked out a lot better than I expected.  It balanced, and the tea didn't get completely lost related to joining a stronger alcohol taste, it played a role.  Tasting the actual alcohols themselves, the full-strength versions, wasn't quite as approachable.  I drank a lot of whiskey and other alcohol when I was young, more before the official drinking age in the US than in the last decade, but I'm really not on that page now.



That was the short version already.  Related to the setting, the cafe is beautiful, with a nice bar seating area, sized to hold a half dozen or so people, and with plenty of other tables inside.  There is even more overflow seating outside, which wasn't required for this event.  It all worked out well.  Han and his staff were great hosts and the people I met there were nice.

More about local tea cafes, and sourcing teas

The next typical direction to go would be saying more about those tea examples, I guess to start into review territory, but I really won't go down to that level of depth.  The teas were nice, and interesting, Mei Leaf brand teas (related to both his brother's London shop and Chinalife online tea sales, a related brand).  It's unusual to drink so many teas that vary so much at the same time like that.  Per some people's preferences more continuity might be better, staying in a more limited range, but I don't see it that way.  I think a lot of variation in types worked well.


That approach doesn't lend itself to review analysis but it's nice to stop doing that in different contexts, to appreciate the overall effect of teas more, and just notice individual aspects as they come to mind, and to skip putting a name to many of them.  It seems possible to miss the forest for the trees to some extent when conducting reviews, to zero in on attributes and character elements but not fully appreciate the experience for all the isolating and describing details.

Seven Suns cafe photo from the last visit (with cold-drip apparatus)

I won't speculate as to where those teas stand related to other teas I've tried, or talk about loose tea quality or pricing much at all (interrelated topics), but I did want to venture into how I see it as a great resource to have this sort of a cafe environment to try nice teas in.  There was a time, not long ago, when only one such cafe was ever mentioned as an option in Bangkok, Double Dogs, a Chinatown cafe.  That is a nice enough place, reviewed here.  I've also reviewed Peace Oriental, a cafe positioned as higher-end, actually not that far from Seven Suns, just up the street in Ekamai.  From there though Peony cafe selling more mid-range loose teas and blends is more typical, with some odd exceptions out there.  Luka cafe offers some nice Ceylon (not the commercial versions, specialty orthodox teas, if that means anything).  I am probably missing other exceptions, but the general point remains the same, there are options, but this shop is unique in some ways.

Seven Suns cafe, another part of it

Seven Suns is different than the others for offering interesting, nice-version range teas at a per-pot price range that competes with coffee shops.  It seems awkward to drift into pricing concerns--unthinkable, per standard tea-blog conventions, really--but since I see this point as important I'll do just that.  It matches the scope of some of my own self-assigned tea evangelist project.  There are no other Bangkok cafes--that I'm aware of, and I do look into such things--that give people a chance to try a broad range of teas of that quality at coffee drink pricing.

Double Dogs, a bit casual, nice for a Chinatown shop theme

Teas at Double Dogs aren't exorbitant but as I recall they did price pots of tea in the 250-400 baht range (more than a year ago on my last visit), maybe something like $10 and up to try a tea in that cafe.  That isn't bad for trying really interesting teas, but more than coffee (in Bangkok at least; I've not yet heard of $18 cup of coffee options coming here, although maybe I just missed that).  Peace Oriental is on another page, with some really interesting options if pricing of 650 baht / $20 per pot of tea isn't seen as problematic.  I tried a tea there, once; it was good.



I've not checked Seven Sun's price range since the remodel but it had been down towards what Starbucks charges for drinks, more like 150 baht.  That really is a great value for trying something truly unique--teas like those we tried in that event tasting--versus having yet another giant milky-caramel-espresso-whatever those are.  Those can be nice; I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with dressed up coffee, it's just a different sort of thing.  Peony cafes sell teas in a similar price range, maybe even a little less, but it's not necessarily teas on the same level, with some plain teas but the shop more oriented towards blends, which are fine if one is into blends.  Their plain teas aren't necessarily bad but the last time I visited I couldn't decide that I really wanted any of them, since I've been a bit spoiled by regularly drinking better versions of everything they sell, and the range is limited.


As for buying loose tea the main channel now is typically online shops, or even different types of options that sell relatively directly from providers.  The selection available online is vast, with options across essentially all types, costs, and quality levels (for the most part).  Along with there being great values online there are also some overpriced teas being sold.  Beyond not having a chance to try the teas and judge them for yourself--against preference, or to rate quality level, which varies a lot--teas may not always be the type they are actually sold as.


If someone has a relatively unrestricted tea budget then trying the first 100 online outlets chance contact offers up may be a reasonable approach, but if budget is any level of concern then research and asking around online for recommendations makes a lot more sense.  At some point more targeted purchasing would be desirable to narrow variability to within a more positive range, but then one does tend to learn different kinds of lessons from trying bad teas.

also tea, just a different type

An event like this tasting cuts all of those concerns out of the picture; a diverse set of teas is right there to try.  Online sales can never completely take the place of tea shops for this reason; you can only taste teas in person.  Beyond tasting events and shops that freely offer you the option to try teas before you buy them sitting down for a pot of tea in a cafe is a great way to expand your horizons.



Anyone in Bangkok really interested in teas might try out all the places I've mentioned here, with Seven Suns standing out as a good alternative among them.  And they do sell blends, iced teas, matcha, and cocktails, so lots of range, but I'd recommend moving past that to try out some better single-type brewed teas.

Revisiting Seven Suns cafe in Ekamai, Bangkok

I revisited a Bangkok tea cafe that's been renovated recently, Seven Suns, in Ekamai. That was the place where the owner Han, with a background in traditional Chinese medicine, was trying different approaches to healthy blends and cold teas to help people transition to appreciating plain teas.

some nice space, along with some alchemy-themed cold infuser equipment

The cafe is beautiful.  It was nice before, but the renovation idea was to turn an outdoor space in a nice shopping center into a partly indoor and partly outdoor space.  It's quite hot in Bangkok about two thirds of the time, or maybe almost always, and now most of the space is air conditioned.

In this last post I talked to the Han about his ideas beyond introducing people to plain, traditional hot brewed tea versions (what I'm into).  He was developing blends, some based on healthier ingredient alternatives, in addition to just focusing on taste, with more focus on cold teas.  He was even dabbling in tea cocktails, using teas as a basis for alcoholic drinks.



All that progresses, and he still sells plain teas by the pot and loose (take-away), and some teaware, a good selection for including different versions of that.  A local article just went into a little detail on that range, with some nice photos.

I tried a tea there again.  Normally I'd try the most appealing plain, single type hot tea but an exception seemed in order.  I  was torn between a matcha white chocolate frappe or a cold matcha with mint and elder flower drink, and went with the staff's recommendation for the latter.



I'm not really into matcha, even though in tea circles back in the US that's like a foodie saying they don't really get French food.  I've had it, and even took part in two formal Japanese tea ceremonies where they served it (both a long time ago--lets not get into that part).  But I've not tried it the appropriate number times that make that profile familiar; I've never acquired a taste for it.  Or maybe it's just that the Starbucks latte version really doesn't count, or that I don't care as much for green tea as any other type, and it's sort of in that general range.  I've even made it at home, although surely I bought an awful grade of it, even though I bought it in Japan.  I love matcha-based soft serve ice cream, for what that's worth; maybe I'll get there.




Anyway, the tea was fine.  It was iced, and came across a little like a juice with the flavor inputs of mint and some herb added in, bright and fresh.  It was a little sweet but nothing like the milk-tea level of sweetness, still on the natural side.  It occurred to me that I'd have probably liked it even better 20 years ago when I was more into juices and tisanes.  I probably would've also liked a more conventional matcha latte better, although I don't love those either.  I drink plain loose teas, steeped versions, and I can sort of relate to green teas, but I would only really miss Longjing if I stopped drinking any of those.  Lately I drink as much black tea as oolong, and not all that much lighter oolong, with white teas and pu'ers mixed in.

Where was I going with all this?  The iced teas and blends should be perfect for Thai tastes and brutal hot weather.  The shop has a nice cafe feel, and Ekamai is a good place for reaching out to trendy young Bangkok professionals.  They only need to make some numbers add up and it's all good.  I'll be curious to see how the range of new offerings maps onto the tea evangelist awareness function, if it really does work to sell floral blends and novel iced teas to help shift people over to "plain" oolongs and such.


For anyone local to here (Bangkok) there is a tea-social themed event there February 24th (link here), probably a good time to check it out and try some different teas.

Seven Suns tea cafe, and visions of the future of tea in Bangkok

Per first impressions Seven Suns is a stylish modern cafe in a small shopping area that looks like a shop in Ekamai should, simple and pleasant.  Being an outdoor cafe it's a bit warm in March, but at least there are never any problems with cold weather in Bangkok.

small cafe store with loose teas selection

The tea menu is novel, lots of variety and blends, not the most standard tea and flowers blends one typically sees, but different takes in different directions, more herbs, drifting into fruit elements.   Being a tea purist--which really could seem a bit boring to an outsider, I suppose--I picked a nice plain black tea and sat down with Han Mei, the owner, to talk about tea.


It turns out he has a background in selling herbs as Chinese medicine, owning a prior business related to that.  Part of his current direction is to make teas people will demand with some basis in function, positive health effects.


That tea I had was nice.  It was a slightly malty, slightly dry black tea, with reasonably clean flavors and good balance.  Someone could get hooked on this as their daily tea, depending on preference, and finding interesting, decent Chinese black teas is not a given in Bangkok.  But there is a range of options out there, which I'll go into more later.  First more on two much more interesting subjects, teas blended for health benefits and how to tailor teas to Bangkok tastes, to get people started.


I wasn't going to do much more with a detailed review but I will mention the original vendor's take on the tea, a China Life product:

the tea; more on the brewing device here

PHOENIX BALL BLACK - Hong Long Zhu:  Incredible hand rolled black tea from Fujian. An aroma filled with cocoa and black cherry similar to a black forest gateau. Rich with autumn forest tones, nuts and stone fruit astringency.


It was like that!  I would add malt, and the effect of the astringency was unusual, a little dry in a pleasant way, but I'd have trouble going further with describing that aspect anyway.  The sweetness and good balance really made it work.



About the tea service, I recently reviewed a cafe where they just didn't seem to know tea.  They presented a teapot with two cups of tea infusing in a large pot with no way to stop brewing while you drink the first cup, and later they made no offer to refill the pot.  In other places they leave you alone to brew gongfu style or walk you through that as need be, which at least is functional, if potentially a little tricky.  It really shouldn't be that hard to put some simple system in place, and they had it sorted out at Seven Suns, in this case using an unusual Western style infusion device, a suitable alternative for the tea type.

Tea related to Chinese medicine

Han, but the picture really doesn't do him justice

We didn't get too far into this subject but since I've been drifting into it lately I'll pass on some of what Han said.  His family business in England was in Chinese medicine, one he'd continued here on his own, so he drew on a lot of prior exposure.  I didn't get the impression that he's trained as a medical herbalist, although he may have more knowledge and exposure than many with formal training that do get around to making extensive claims.


I asked how all that works and the answer was basically what you'd expect.  One would go to see a specialist, similar to a doctor visit, and explain symptoms or other health related factors.  There would be a limited degree of examination, in a slightly unfamiliar form per Western medicine, taking a pulse, looking at your tongue, etc.  For what it's worth Han that said there is a lot to be learned from the appearance of someone's tongue, related to health status, perhaps similar to my masseuse telling me that I had a specific type of back problems once when giving me a foot massage.


Next this specialist would prescribe a custom treatment, related to resolving ailments or supporting organ functions.  He never extended this to discussion to the more exotic concepts of internal "heat" or "wind" but for a skeptic it would all seem headed in that direction, the description of improving liver and kidney functions.  Of course if it all really worked the specialist could describe the treatment in terms of magical spirits or astral planes and it wouldn't matter if these existed or not; regardless of cause and effect it would still be working.

cold-drip brewing apparatus

This shop has little to do with all that; it was more just an interesting tangent, to me.  Han uses this knowledge to create blends designed for certain effects, more closely related to nutritional supplements than medicine, for example, a tea and herb blend designed to offset the impact of stress.  It's a bit more "one size fits all" related to causes and resolution but then I do just sit at a desk a lot of the week, just like lots of people in this city, so I suspect there are health-issue related patterns that repeat.  That's only one direction he's going with tea, and to me the next main one is more interesting, enabling entry to interest in decent tea.


Prior to getting into that, I will mention that Han is experimenting with cold drip brewing, using a really cool looking device really designed for coffee.  There isn't much to say about that yet since he's still experimenting, so I'll rejoin that line of thought later if I try some.  He's also experimenting with tea and alcohol cocktails.  It's a lot, right, traditional plain loose teas, blends, health related blends, new brewing techniques, and alcohol blends / tea cocktails, many of which might sound familiar.  But he's really just getting warmed up; his mission is really to figure out how to ramp up interest in real tea.

Getting Bangkok into tea

This was the subject we talked about most: what will get people in Bangkok into tea.  The traditional tea cafes are coming, it's just taking time.  One cafe a few blocks away does a Zen-oriented theme (Peace Oriental), and I reviewed another new one recently that seemed to draw on the modern early-industrialist-aesthetic artisanal-product theme (Luka cafe).

seating view, Ekamai plaza shops

A few Chinese people here drink Longjing and Tiekuanyin and Dahongpao, closer to the page I'm on.  It has since occurred to me that the most obvious entry "gateway" might be hiding in plain site:  the thousands of "bubble tea" or powdered Thai tea stands crowded next to every major commuter exchange point.  Of course Han is looking for the next step instead, pushing past that and RTD teas.  Seven Suns does sell a relatively conventional brewed Thai iced tea, the orange one, just of course not made from powder.


The most obvious gateway is herb and floral blends; nothing so new about that.  His take is new, making it his own, and tying it back to function, to health benefit.  These are mostly prepared in cold-tea ready-to-drink forms since this is the tropics, through use of novel combinations.  It's hard to describe one tea that really made me think he's onto something new, but then we were talking more about the general approach, and it would've helped to actually try a blend to get the effect.

He's also still working on the expectation for soda-sweet products without sacrificing the health function that comes with a drink not based on lots of sugar.  That's a tough one.  The easy way out seems to be to put a small pour-bottle of simple syrup on the counter, as Japanese people have used for a long time, and let customers ruin their own tea.  Han didn't seem comfortable with that, as if it was faltering at the last step and dropping the vision, so he tries to balance more natural flavors.  In my experience from seeing other tea-bloggers' paths people naturally seem to go this route on their own, moving from blends and sweetening teas to better plain teas prepared well enough to be experienced just as they are.

This might not come across as interesting as it was to me, that they're selling iced tea blends, something Snapple started decades ago.  The interesting part was combining these different ideas in this way.  Snapple was tea stripped of what tea is supposed to be on lots of levels, if good for anything only as a starting point.  More recently people in Bangkok have only traded the bottles for artificially flavored powders that someone else stirs into water for them.

Although I've not really done justice to Seven Suns product range in this I'll move on to a bit about the tea landscape in Bangkok, sort of an overlapping subject.

Bangkok tea cafes  (what I've reviewed of them, with names as blog post links here)

Seven Suns (this place):  a great resource for traditional, plain teas and blends, and a cafe stop for hot and iced teas.  In Ekamai, an older trendy Bangkok area.  Great value for a broad range of products (in the Starbucks price range), including take-home loose teas and blends.

Double Dogs:  the old-style Chinese tea cafe in Chinatown, off Yaowarat, the main road, comfortable if a bit plain and dark.  The traditional Chinese teas are nice, just a bit costly (a pot of tea around 300 baht / $10), unless you compare them to even more costly newer cafe alternatives.  The value isn't great for loose teas given that it's in Chinatown but better teas aren't as easy to turn up as you might expect, even there.


Peace Oriental:  also in Ekamai, going for the Zen-cafe higher-end specialty tea market.   This is a modern, quiet, pleasant place to drop $20 / 600 baht on a pot of tea, unless that pricing sounds absurd.  But that's really just how the economics work out for that business model and product range since that quality level of tea is not easy to find, and the theme isn't based on volume sales.  Dry loose tea pricing (take-away) is still eye-watering but more feasible.


Peony tea shop:  basic teas, blends, a mall-cafe chain, moderately priced.  For a tea purist further along the curve there might not be much here of interest but for someone starting on floral blends or basic loose teas it's fine.  At least they're not going to try and sell you a tea bag, or at least I think they wouldn't.


Luka cafe:  a newer entry, that trendy modern-artisanal early-industrial-vibe place I mentioned.  The teas seemed nice, definitely better than ordinary types, worth checking out, but as a coffee shop with more focus on food there's really no emphasis on tea, they just happen to be selling good versions.


Rocket cafe:  a trendy coffee shop that crosses over into loose tea, with more focus on food.  So this is exactly what Luka is, just the 1.0 version, where that concept stood a couple years ago, with more ordinary grade teas, and less interesting decor and food.  Since Luka was a bit too trendy and cool for me, really, I'd feel more comfortable grabbing a lunch here anyway.


Tealicious cafe:  mostly tea bags, some real loose tea; a Sathorn tourist area cafe.  This is the problem with limited tea awareness; a cafe could sell tea as tea bags with the owners and customers thinking that's ok.  It's really not ok.  It's just as well to drink an instant coffee instead, or better still to drink a cup of hot water, tastier.


Bridge Cafe and Art Space:  one of thousands of places selling ordinary teas in Bangkok, but at least they had a reasonable version of the traditional Thai iced tea, brewed to order using an espresso machine, not the only place I've seen that.  This is really where tea stands here in general.


Twinnings:  the one cafe I've not been to--so no link--but too obvious not to mention.  Who hasn't had Twinnings teas; some are ok, some not that ok, just don't buy the tea-bag versions, and pass on the English Breakfast Blend, but maybe others I've not tried are really good.  The cafes are geared towards people having a nice tea in an impressive mall cafe with lots of wood and ceramic and polished metal decor.  Bangkok hi-so's are just as likely to appreciate high prices as a sure sign that they are in the right place.


Mind you these are only cafes.  Two shops come to mind as stand-outs, my favorite in Chinatown is the Jip Eu shop, and the mall-based Tea De Zhang shop is the main one that "tea people" in Bangkok frequent.  There are other places to get tea here in town but nothing I've turned up on the same level, except online, which I won't go into.