The Ryndex

(This is still from 2006… I’m catching up, though, aren’t I?)

The cosmos occasionally aligns incredibly. I came down the stairs at Quick, and I spotted Anna waiting outside the milling crowd. Antonio, engulfed in the undisciplined French lines around the fast food cashier, was already calling me to meet them. I seldom encounter people by chance on the street.

We decided to celebrate by going for some fancy tea. The Mariage Frères, down in the Marais, have imported fancy teas for 150 years. They serve lovely pots of their hundreds of teas in a salon at the back of the store.

I’d always vaguely wanted to go there, but was put off by the price. I’m not a secret scrooge — it’s like going to the museums on the first Sunday of the month. I’m here; they’re free. Why not take advantage of that? Likewise, there are hundreds of reasonable cafés and terraces in Paris. Why not take advantage of them at a tenth of the price of a cup at an expensive salon du thé?

However, you don’t always get the luxuries you merit, but you always get the luxuries you offer yourself. And I should be cutting down on the ten espresso habit anyway. In we went.

The waiter, in formal white tie, gave us a better table than my jeans and general dishevelment deserved. We sat just above the ground floor along the corridor at the atrium — a bit of passing traffic, of course, but the best spot to look over everyone and (more importantly) to be seen. We were The Royals, holding court at our balcony.

We chose the tea from a list of hundreds, organized by location, type of leaf, and occasionally the season of harvest. Along with the tea list, they thoughtfully provided us with a large user’s guide, explaining the differences and importance of the classifications, how to identify the different leaves and how to make the ideal pot. We floundered through the list and the guide, which explained to us that tea relieves the brain of somber thought and chases away stupidity. Hooray!

You may be familiar with the word Pekoe, which comes from the chinese word for the fuzzy hair found on the tea leaf. Orange Pekoe is a step up (apparently Orange refers rather to the Dutch royalty as opposed to the colour of the leaf). You can find Orange Pekoe in the supermarket — but in the world of tea, it’s equivalent to decorating a pine stump and calling it a Christmas tree. They make supermarket tea from the broad, coarse leaves from the bottom of the stem of the tea plant.

The better quality teas use the single tiny leaf at the tip of the stem, and the best quality teas only use the best part of this leaf. Experts abbreviate Orange Pekoe as OP and add qualifications for each step up in quality. One step better is FOP: Flowery Orange Pekoe. Another step up is GFOP: Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe.

All three of us decided that if we were going to indulge, we might as well get the top qualification, SFTGFOP1: Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, with a special commendation for excellence.

Anna ordered the Lingia (rhymes with ninja), a black tea from Darjeeling harvested in the spring (first flush). The user’s guide said that it was an excellent tea for special moments.

Antonio had the Arya “Rose Himalaya”, another black tea, but from the autumn harvest. It’s supposed to have an unexplainable flowery flavour.

I ordered the Fikka Lima, from Nepal. For some reason, I couldn’t find it in the user’s guide, so it was like a Secret Party just for me.

A bit after taking our order, White Tie jumped out and demanded “Lingia?!” Antonio and I glanced pointedly at Anna. She panicked, thinking there was a problem and that she’d have to descend back into the tea list and pick another, but it was just to bring her her teapot.

The teapot Mariage Frères is a pleasing sphere wrapped in a silver cozy and closed tight with a little clasp. They’ve prepared the tea in the back, and according to the user’s guide, each tea has a perfect water temperature and length of time for steeping. The server removes the leaves from the pot before serving so that the tea remains consistent from the first to the last serving. We each had our proper teapot with slightly less than a Litre each.

My first impression of my first taste of fancy tea was… errr… not especially life-changing or remarkable. What was I expecting? The tea was delicate, but it didn’t surprise or delight me. Nope. At ten times the price, fancy tea alone only delivers, say, one tenth extra enjoyment over regular tea.

But that’s going to remain a secret between you and me. The verdict is that the tea experience is fun, and even more fun with a silver spoon, a white jacquard tablecloth and White Tie as a server. Even the sugar was fancy, large grains like diamonds in the Mariage Frères sugar bowl. I don’t normally take sugar, but I had a bit with the second cup when the tea had a stronger, tea-like taste.

Oh, I feel some poetry coming on!

I could easily skip the sugar with my tea, and I could easily have skipped the tea entirely with my afternoon conversation. But I couldn’t have skipped a pleasant afternoon with my friends — and if it’s at a fancy salon, that’s just a bit of extra interest and some bonus luxury!

Tin Foiled Travel