{"id":4854,"date":"2003-12-04T10:54:29","date_gmt":"2003-12-04T18:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/blog\/2003\/12\/04\/4854\/"},"modified":"2003-12-04T10:54:29","modified_gmt":"2003-12-04T18:54:29","slug":"imperial-tea-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/?p=4854","title":{"rendered":"Imperial Tea Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imperialtea.com\/\">Imperial Tea Court<\/a> is incredibly cool.  They have just about every tea you can imagine, and pride themselves in their tea-fu.  They are so crazy about tea that they supply a bunch of the higher-end Bay Area restaurants with hand-crafted Chinese tea.<\/p>\n<p \/>\nThey have black teas, green teas, and <b>white teas<\/b>.  I didn&#8217;t make that up.  Each tea comes with particular directions on the temperature of the water with which it is to be prepared.  They have a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imperialtea.com\/TeaClub.asp\">Tea Club<\/a> which you can buy for someone as a Christmas present.<\/p>\n<p \/>\nIf you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I strongly urge you to go there after a lunch in Chinatown.  They offer a whole range of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imperialtea.com\/about\/Tastings.asp\">Tea Presentation Programmes<\/a> to fit any schedule or budget.  It&#8217;s a good treat for your sweetie.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n   Tasting tea is a lot cheaper than tasting wine, and you can still drive afterwards.  Or walk to shopping&#8230;<\/p>\n<p \/>\nThey have a <i>gaiwan<\/i> service, which is the budget service, and the loose tea is served in the Chinese covered cups of the same name (they will show you how to use them- the lid acts as your filter).<\/p>\n<p \/>\n  They also have a higher-end &#8220;<i>gong fu<\/i>&#8221; service where the tea comes in unglazed <i>Yixing<\/i> (&#8220;Yee-shing&#8221;)  cups which have had tea steeped in them since before you were born&#8230;  These cups are priceless because like wine casks, they retain the flavor of all the previous tea brewings.<\/p>\n<p \/>\nIt&#8217;s a good date, because if you ask, the staff will tell you all about the particular tea you are tasting and make you look good.<\/p>\n<p \/>\nYOU:  This tea has a complex taste to it.  Where is it from?<br \/>\nTEA PSYCHO:  Ah, a good question.  You are no doubt referring to the rich herbal scent of this &#8220;monkey picked&#8221; green tea, which uses only the tips of select tea leaves, grown on one particular hill in China&#8230;<br \/>\nYOU:  It&#8217;s much different than the other green tea we had earlier.<br \/>\nYOUR DATE:  ooh!  You are so cultured!  Let&#8217;s skip the movie and have noisy sex at my place!<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p><i>Imperial Tea Court is incredibly cool and makes a great date.  Tasting tea is a lot cheaper than tasting wine, and you can still drive afterwards.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imperial Tea Court is incredibly cool. They have just about every tea you can imagine, and pride themselves in their tea-fu. They are so crazy about tea that they supply a bunch of the higher-end Bay Area restaurants with hand-crafted Chinese tea. They have black teas, green teas, and white teas. I didn&#8217;t make that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}