Inside the Restaurant Where Everything Is Made from Tea

Cha for Tea is a popular chain of modern teahouses operated by the famous Ten Ren company. As you can imagine, their speciality is tea, with two full pages of varieties ranging from the classics to the more obscure. In addition to this, they also serve a wide variety of food that is made from tea, from noodles and dim sum to desserts and side dishes. Although it sounded rather gimmicky at first, we figured that, since Ten Ren Tea brought Taiwanese tea to the world, they might just know what they’re doing.

We visited the Cha for Tea branch in Ximen on a Tuesday evening. The restaurant is located on the second floor of a Ten Ren tea store and was surprisingly empty except for a few tables of older Taiwanese families and tourists. After briefly consulting the English menu, we decided on two set meals, judging them to be the best value. We chose the tea noodle meal ($369), which came with kimchi, a green tea plum shot, your choice of noodles, your choice of dessert, and your choice of tea. We also ordered the tea dim sum meal set ($409) which came with a salad, a green tea plum shot, your choice of dim sum, your choice of side dish, your choice of soup, your choice of dessert, and your choice of tea.

Our green tea plum shots, the salad, and the kimchi came first — all the cold dishes at once. Service was excellent from the get-go — each successive course of our meal arrived promptly. The salad and kimchi were good, though not better than expected. The green tea plum shot was frozen, and surprisingly tasty and refreshing.

We had chosen the tea flavoured wonton soup as part of our set, and found it to be delicious. The broth was light but flavourful, and the wontons were soft and juicy. We tried our best to taste the tea inside, but it was in vain.

Next came our side dish, tea tofu. This was really delicious: the sauce was brilliant, and the tofu fell apart in our mouths (and on our chopsticks). We may have been imagining it, but we felt like we could taste a little bit of tea in the sauce.

Next came our dim sum, Cha’s steamed pork dumplings. These were good too. The skin was a little thicker than some xiao long bao we’ve enjoyed in the past, but the filling was flavourful and juicy, with a slightly interesting aftertaste that had us convinced we could taste the tea.

Our noodles also arrived at the same time; we had chosen the tea spare rib with lotus leaf and noodles, and were excited to see that the noodles were green. Once again, the broth was light but tasty, and we could definitely tell that the noodles had been made with tea.

We were pleasantly surprised to see how big the short ribs were — they hadn’t skimped — but were left a little wanting at the taste. Maybe it was just us, but there was an interesting flavour to both the meat and whatever grain it had been cooked in that we didn’t love. You could definitely taste the smoky tea, but we would pass on this if offered it again.

For dessert, we chose the sesame freeze cake with green tea cream and the oriental beauty jelly. The cake was perfectly adequate, though we couldn’t for the life of us make out the tea flavours, and the jelly was awesome. If you like oriental beauty tea, you should definitely give it a try!

For our tea option, we chose the ice matcha latte with matcha ice cream and the guava tea. The matcha latte was rich and creamy, with a heavy but not unpleasant matcha taste. It was similar to a milkshake, and we felt almost like we were getting an extra dessert. The guava tea was light on flavour and to our surprise, not sweet at all. You could still make out the guava taste, but it was very understated. The teas we chose were at completely different ends of the spectrum, but we enjoyed them both in their own way and we were glad that we got the opportunity to try them.

Overall, we had a lot of fun trying to taste the tea in each one of our dishes, even if we didn’t succeed most of the time. The food was good, and although it wasn’t particularly cheap, we felt like it wasn’t too bad a deal. We wouldn’t recommend going here for weeknight dinner, but it’s the sort of fun activity that you might want to bring visitors to or get a group of friends involved in.

What’s the vibe?

Slightly upscale restaurant, with lots of older Taiwanese guests and tourists. The service was excellent from start to finish. We liked the fact that everything was made with tea, yet it didn’t feel too gimmicky.

Worth it?

We weren’t absolutely blown away by the food (and had a hard time tasting the tea in most dishes) but we thought it was a fun activity.

Would you go back?

Probably not, unless we were going to bring visitors.

Last visited May 2019.

Click the pins below for more information on each branch, or visit their website.