If there was ever a place to encourage the love of tea in London, this is it. Don't be dissuaded by what seems like an odd location, as it is set back in a Notting Hill neighborhood, in what looks like a residential home. I personally think the location adds to the relaxation of the experience, as you're not watching people run up and down on the high street or dealing with the crowds that come with that kind of location. Pei who runs this lovely tea house(open on Saturdays & Sundays 12-6pm) is incredibly friendly and helpful. The decor is gorgeous, with elegantly worn furnishings and gongfu tea ceremony accoutrements at every table. The music is also low and very soothing and adds to the ambiance without being distracting. There is a excellent selection of teas from Japanese and Chinese greens to both black and green pu erh, and a really fantastic selection of oolongs. He also offers a list of tisanes that can be added to the tea for extra flavouring, such as rose, osmanthus, or longan fruit. I sampled two oolongs, the honey orchid phoenix and the lishan. Both were very smooth with lovely mouth feel. As a side note, each table has a little card explaining the steps in gongfu tea preparation, and I think that is such a nice way to introduce people to a different style of tea prep. I was also being a little slow today and I was holding the yixing pot in a way which limited the flow of tea, and Pei saw me struggling, and corrected the mistake and showed me how to do it, without making me feel stupid or embarrassed. That, I appreciate so much! The food on offer is going to change weekly as he tries out new things, but our glutinous rice parcels and vegetarian dumplings were brilliant, savoury and filling, and our clementine almond cake was moist and fluffy and delicious. My friend I both had a pot of tea, 2 savoury plates and one sweet item, and our bill came to 11.50 each. Which I think is an amazing price considering how delicious and well made everything was. Individual pots of tea run between £3.50-4.50, and individual sweet and savoury items are around £2-3. My suggestion is to use the website form to make a reservation, as the space is on the small side, and you know you want the best service and experience possible. So book in advance and be so incredibly happy you did. also, I was so inspired by my experience today I came home and busted out my own gong fu set that has sat unused on my mantle since it came home with me from Hong Kong. It's now been dusted off and I am currently enjoying a lovely cup of genmaicha. read more

Teanamu Chaya Teahouse - Tea Rooms Near Me - London, XGL

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Amazing place to be on a wet windy nasty Sunday afternoon. I was introduced to this place by a number of friends who swear by having high tea in an alternative environment Teanamu is highly highly unassuming, and it's barely visible from the main street. From the website, you're not really sure what kind of experience you're getting into, but when you sit down, you realize that Pei (the tea "sommelier") knows exactly what he's talking about and about the teas that he has on his menu. First thing, you decide on which "set" of food and drink you really want... I definitely recommend just going with the full Wabi Set, which is only £13, and comes with 2 savory foods, and all the sweets available. Then you select the type of tea you're looking to have during the experience. He has a full range of Green, Red, Black and Herbal teas. I went with the Pu'er tea, and was distinctly instructed on how best to brew it. Pei is from my hometown and loves to cater to your needs. It's like walking into a Prix Fixe tea place, where you don't get a choice of food, but it doesn't really matter. We started with some soba with a great asian paste, cucumbers and shoots. That and the combination of the "lo mai fan" - glutinous rice in pandan leaves is just about as delicious as I remember from home. The fact that you're in his home really makes it a great time especially if you come with friends, since he treats you just like one from the first time you walk in the door, until the second you disappear from the living room. You then move to the sweets, and I confess, I love macaroons and a good scone with clotted cream, but man, his home made macaroons make La Duree taste like they're bought from a Tesco. AMAZING. Will I go back? I will definitely come back, maybe even next week. DELICIOUS! Try now, because you ain't gonna have anything else like this in London. read more

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This chinese Teahouse is doing an amazing afternoon tea, probably the best I had in London. Everything centres around traditional tea ceremony which adds to the experience. Food is delicious and really feeling (portions do look small, but you will savour every bite). The house is far away from the crowd and its atmosphere really encourage you to be silent and savour. I left the place with a full tummy and a sense of relaxation. Bookings needed. read more

Teanamu Chaya Teahouse - Tea Rooms Near Me - London, XGL

I have to admit to going to Chaya Teahouse twice now and its only been open for a month or so! It could easily become an addiction but I suspect soon it will be very busy and much harder to get a table. Clearly I love it, am going again in a couple of weeks to take my friend for a birthday lunch treat on me. I love the teas -and choosing one is wonderful from the beautiful little cards. My favourites is Honey Orchid Phoenix, the name is a mouthful but its a lovely fragrant light Oolong. I advise sharing your teas with whoever you go with and sharing theirs so you get to try another kind -we were even given two little tea cups each so the taste of one wouldn't affect the taste of the other. To be honest I go as much for the food as the drink -the savoury lotus leaf wrapped glutinous rice with wonderful filling of braised Shitake mushroom and aduki bean is amazing, I could just eat my way through those for the rest of my life, really delicate and delicious. All the dishes are beautiful but my favourite desserts are the chocolate 'fudge' with goji berries and other healthy bits, the mousse from the first week with sweetcorn (of all things, sounds bad but was sublime), and the rose petal jam, ooh!. I believe Pei trained at the Cordon Bleu cookery school so I am really waiting excitedly for the matcha macaroons he says are coming soon -I want a bag of those to take away please... Pei is a charming host and is incredibly knowledgeable about teas -he offers different kinds of green, oolong, jasmine, white, red, pu erhs etc all of which he sources from wherever they are grown, amazing, no compromises. In fact I think the whole experience is wonderful and I am looking forward to taking my birthday girl friend there very soon. read more

I absolutely loved my experience here. Not only was it incredibly unique, but it also left me and my stomach feeling perfectly content - which I find is a rarity among most afternoon teas. **Note: Normally I don't write such long reviews, but I thought my amazing experience here merited one - I didn't know how else I could capture just how wonderful this place is. If you want a short summary: The tea, food, and service here is incredible. You will not be disappointed. My friend and I made a reservation to come here at 12 pm on a Sunday and we had planned to get to Notting Hill sufficiently early after hearing that the place itself can be difficult to find. I can definitely see how that could be true, but we followed the directions on the website and it wasn't too challenging. Anyway, we were the first ones there and upon entering the teahouse we were quite surprised to find that we had wandered into the living room/kitchen of an actual home. The place was pretty homey in that sense, which I came to like more and more as time passed. There were only 4 tables, and the kitchen was open for us to see. After being seated, Pei (the owner) came by to ask us what kind of tea we wanted. My friend and I weren't the biggest tea connoisseurs and so (especially because there were so many choices; there are little card descriptions, though, which was really nice) we asked for Pei's recommendations. I ended up going for the Honey Oolong (I think that's what it was called) as part of the full afternoon tea set (~30 pounds). Within minutes Pei came back with our tea. He showed us exactly how to prepare it - which I definitely appreciated since I would've never figured it out on my own. The process is a lot more intricate than I ever expected, but I guess the effort paid off because the tea (especially by the 3rd brew) was phenomenal. Onto the food - I can't describe how much I loved all of it (well, except for one item that I'll discuss later). I loved the open-faced sandwiches - the bread, the spread, and the topping on each one were phenomenal (although I got a second cucumber one because I'm not a fan of egg mayonnaise). The sticky rice in lotus parcel and dumplings - the dim sum part - were amazing too and were clearly prepared with care. The dumplings, paired with the sauce, were probably the best I've ever had, which is a lot to say considering I grew up in a Chinese household in a super Asian community. And oh my goodness, the dessert. The dessert platter consisted of 5 items - a scone, mango seed cake, a guava pastry coated in marzipan, hazelnut coconut chocolate truffles, and a honeycomb treat. My favorite was definitely the truffles, followed by the guava marzipan pastry, the mango seed cake, and the scone. I didn't quite like the honeycomb treat though - it was a bit too sticky-sweet for me. Even so, I absolutely loved everything else and was felt genuinely sad upon taking my last bite for each. Overall, I HIGHLY recommend this place if you're looking for a more unique "afternoon tea" experience. It's less sweet than most, which I appreciated because the last time I had stereotypical high tea, I felt sick afterward from consuming so much sugar. I thought the high tea here was the perfect balance between sweet and savory, and on top of that it was also relatively light. The ambience was great as well, and the service was phenomenal. I will definitely try to come back before leaving London. read more

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This small tea house will make you feel like you are in someone else living room having a tea. It's cozy and nice, with some traditional Japanese furniture. We've book the wabi sabi afternoon tea and it was superb! The only difficult part was choosing the tea I wanted, but the personal was really nice and friendly and he help me to choose the one more accurate to my yin. Honestly, no idea how he did it but loved it! He also recommended to order different kind of teas in your table as you can try also your colleagues. And then the food arrives. Personally the only thing I didn't like was the egg mayonnaise sandwich, but the other two were amazing. And the sweets as well! It's a nice different afternoon you can have with friends if you want a quiet afternoon for a chat. And of course, bring your date! She will love it. read more

For photos see Greedy Diva @ http://greedydiva.blogspot.com/2010/05/teanamu-tea-appreciation-and-zen-in.html If I learned 1 thing at the Teanamu tea appreciation workshop last weekend, it's that I should probably throw out the entirety of my existing stash of tea and start again. Tea should, apparently, be drunk in the same year that it's harvested. And while the vintage 1998 ripened Emperor Pu Erh tea I sipped at Teanamu last week was quite divine, I'm not sure my old Earl Grey bags which have been gathering dust behind a crusty jar of Nescafe are going to qualify as "vintage". So who knew there was so much fascinating stuff to know about tea? Well, the delightful Pei of Teanamu for one. He treated me to a tea appreciation workshop at his premises in the leafy streets of Notting Hill last weekend. Tea properly means beverages made from the Camellia sinensis plant, which is native to South East Asia. (Roobos "tea" is not made from this plant and so isn't really a tea, afterall. Imposter!) Green, white, oolong and black teas all originate from this plant - the difference is the sliding scale of oxidation from green (unoxidised) to black (oxidised), which depends on how they are picked and stored prior to ending up in your cup. In between, white is the easiest to make since its partly oxidised. So, that's why we hear about the potential health benefits of green and (now) white teas which are high in anti-oxidants. All types of tea contain loads of healthy nutrients. Generally, tea has a higher caffeine content per gram than coffee, but you need less of it per cuppa. To counteract the caffeine, which is rocketted into your bloodstream when you sip your espresso, tea contains another chemical, theofylline, which acts as a relaxant - keeping you chilled like a Buddist monk as the caffeine calmly works its way into your system. It's no surprise then that tea, and tea ceremonies, are a central part of many Eastern religions. The rituals of Chinese tea drinking are quite different to those of the British and Japanese. While the latter brew their tea in big pots, the Chinese use small porcelain pots and tiny shot sized cups to keep the tea at a stable strength and temperature. Porcelain pots and lower temperatures (70-80 degrees - listen to the kettle, or look out for when the bubbles look like "crab eyes" - or, go on then, be boring and use a thermometer) are used for unoxidised teas which are delicate - so green and white teas. Small traditional clay tea pots are used for oxidised, or black teas, requiring hot, boiled water since a good quality clay pot will retain the hot temperatures. Don't even think about treating them all the same way. If you're as serious as Pei, you'll even buy pure water from the healthfood shop and you certainly won't boil London tap water over and over, increasing the minerality. What were you thinking?? Pei scouts around China, climbing mountains and traipsing through fields, to find reliable sources of top notch tea. He also has trusted suppliers in Japan, and he assures me that most of the stuff you buy in Chinatown would not stand up to the discerning palate of the tea connoisseur. The tea you see in most shops contains only chopped up bits of leaves. In contrast, Pei's tea contains the whole bud and is cut further down the stem past the top leaf shoots. This is better for maintaining nutrients and taste. Pei compared green tea to asparagus (we're back on to food to bring things back to my level) - you should break the tea leaf where it breaks naturally; the lower bits get disgarded for cheaper tea. The test of good tea is that the taste should not disappear too quickly - you should experience the whole taste down the back of your mouth. Our tasting session contained many teapot downing sessions of interesting tea facts and cultural and historical lessons about tea. But best of all, you get to taste them over Pei's delicious, home cooked yuzu macarons and green tea madeleines. (He even conducts classes about cooking with tea, in a kitchen so big and shiny, mine is currently blushing.) Among the ten types of gourmet tea we sampled, were the Silver Needle (a tannic white tea), Maofeng green tea (with a sweet corn quality), Lychee black tea (best drunk from a traditional clay pot - although my ears pricked up hearing it can also be used with success to flavour vodka), a Meng Ding Huang Ya yellow tea (difficult to buy, with an unusual fermented flavour), the Silky Oolong (a half fermented oolong with a creamy, citrussy flavour) and a the Big Snow Mountain Pu Erh 2010 (raw, red tea - to which I attributed a big, fat smoky bacon punch). The Phoenix Eye Jasmine is a hand rolled, white jasmine tea scented with flowers over 7 nights. Cheaper scented teas (or cheaper teas with bergamot) are flavoured with oils. True tea connoisseurs apparently look down their noses a bit at these scented teas as being in the lowly ranks - yes, there's even a class read more

If you are looking for an alternative to a classic english Tea house, that could be an interesting place to try! Me and my lady wanted to have an afternoon tea, but we were looking for something a little bit more cozy, less baroque, and as we wanted to visit Notting Hill we looked forward to come to this tea house, specialised in asian (Chinese&Japanese) tea and proposing a set of patisserie and sandwich with a heavy asian twist. And the result was actually pretty nice! The selection of tea is large enough for you to get lost among the different qualities, and the tea master is available for suggestion. Moreover, he will show you how a tea should be poured according to chinese tradition, and the effect is great. You can choose among two different menus regularly changing, composed by three different sets of dishes: dumpling, open sandwiches and petite patisserie. The food is high quality and the blending of asian flavors (ginger, miso and so on) with classical english items was a delicious news for our palate. Don't miss the scones with rose petal jam, that was a special one! read more

I went with my friend Erin (who also posted). The tea was wonderfully delicious with a wide variety to choose from. The owner was super nice and wanted to make sure we were happy - also wanting to know feed back so he can improve. I wouldn't say improvement is necessary! The food was also good, but the tea and experience was the reason you should go. It is a little hard to find. I would suggest asking for directions when you are making your reservation. read more