My mother was recently in town from P.E.I. for a visit. When she is in Toronto I usually take her out to dinner at a snazzy joint to treat her to something she doesn’t really get to do in Charlottetown. On this most recent trip I opted for something a little different, afternoon tea at the Royal York. I wanted to do something classy where wine or spirits would not be involved as my mom is a strict tee-totaller. This word has nothing to do with tea by the way, apparently it came about from the Temperance movement in the 1800’s when members of Temperance Societies would sign a T after their name to signify their pledge of total abstinence.

I sent out invitations to friends and family to join us and we all met in the lobby on the appointed day for our first experience with this old English tradition. My grandmother, second cousin, two aunts and two good friends who know my mother well gathered around a table in the hotel's fine dining restaurant, Epic, and perused the tea selections. The most popular choices were Earl Gray and English Breakfast, but my cousin Jeanette DeMers opted for a berry blend and I chose the Cherry Rose Tea.

To be honest, I wasn’t too excited about having to drink a cup of tea - any tea. I never drink hot beverages. In grade ten I had my first taste of Tim Horton’s: a double-double proffered by my buddy Butch while we studied for exams. I hated it instantly. As kids my sister, brother and I became addicted to hot chocolate one summer. I had figured out how to make hot chocolate from scratch with loads of sugar. We all got hooked on the caffeine until Grandma came to stay and put us on detox after catching us sitting in the darkened living room watching TV and sipping hot chocolate in the middle of July. I’ve stayed away from hot chocolate ever since. I find hot beverages to be high-maintenance; with a martini or a glass of juice you can immediately take a sip of what’s in front of you. With a coffee or tea you have to sit there blowing forever so you don’t burn your tongue. You can’t get instant satisfaction from a hot beverage the way you can from an ice-cold Bud Lite.

That’s the way I felt until I tasted the Cherry Rose Tea. Well, first I smelled it and it has the greatest aroma in the world. If it were a perfume I would make it my signature scent, although it’s not a perfume-y aroma. Once it had cooled I had a taste and it was phenomenal, light and faintly sweet like tasting the sunshine and petals. While I was ecstatically sniffing my teacup our server placed two large multi-tiered platters in the centre of the table. They were laden with scones, crumpets, crust-less tea sandwiches (watercress and egg salad, cucumber, smoked salmon) that incorporated herbs from the rooftop garden. Fresh cream swans, orange-chocolate Madeleines and the most delicious English fruit cake ever made graced the top plates.

Think all fruit cake sucks? Go to Epic and check this one made by Pastry Chef Joseph Chan, it’s brilliant. “The recipe is simple to make and was introduced to me while I was working for the Fairmont Southampton Bermuda in 1976 by my mentor Executive Pastry Chef Roland Mesnier, who later became Pastry Chef at the White House,” says Chef Chan.

We ladies all had a lovely afternoon which culminated in a tour of the Royal York’s rooftop garden led by Sous-Chef Brian Armstrong. He told me that when young cooks start out at the Royal York they are first put to work in the garden, bringing up dirt, turning the beds. “It teaches them the basics and to appreciate food more.”

The rooftop tours have ended for the fall and winter but will be resuming on May.1st. The afternoon tea is ongoing though and at $19.07 per person it’s quite a deal.

Author (second from right) and family on The Royal York Roof

After my experience at Epic I spoke with Sandra Amarie, owner of the newly opened Moja Tea Gallery on Adelaide West. I asked her to explain the differences between all the teas and she told me that one kind of tea plant, camellia sinensis, grows in China, Japan and Taiwan and its relative, camellia assamica, grows in India and Sri Lanka. Though all teas essentially come from the same plant, they are differentiated by how and when they’re picked and how they are dried.

“White tea is the most delicate, made from the buds and young leaves of the tea plant. It is the purest form of tea. With green tea, the leaves are steamed, which captures the colour. Oolong is semi-oxidized and is a little lighter than black tea which is fully oxidized. Rooibos is not actually a tea, it’s a red leafed bush that grows in Africa that contains no caffeine and is a great anti-oxidant,” Sandra explains.

At Moja, Sandra is experimenting with fresh squeezed loose leaf iced teas which she will eventually be carbonating to offer a sparkling iced tea.

In Atlantic Canada tea still plays a big role in daily life. My two Newfie friends, Ashley Shortall and Adam Bishop are tea fanatics. Hanging out with them can be a bit too “Coronation Street” sometimes when they get to talking about tea. Ashley works at Poor John’s Café on Queen West, they have a house tea blend made by Dandelion Food and Herb that incorporates raspberry leaf and rosehips with rooibos. Adam recently started working as saucier under Anthony Walsh and Tom Brodi at Canoe where the house tea blend combines black and green tea with rose petals and bergamot. Canoe also offers Sencha tea, which is a Japanese green tea crafted from the smaller leaves of the plant, giving it a more refined taste.

From refined to reduced; the bathos of tea. My friend Tracey Dunn’s family always has a pot of tea on the stove at their house in Summerville, P.E.I. It just keeps reducing and getting stronger and stronger. The Dunn teapot is hardcore, it’ll tear your face off if you’re not careful. Some Maritimers I met at a wedding recently said they’d grown up with the same kind of tea. One of them told me, “My aunt used to say, if you can walk on it, it’s ready.”

Ashley Shortall used to work at the Tea Spot in the Bay and urged me to go there if I wanted to get another taste of the tea I’d had at Epic. Once there, I met Manager Laurence Williams who directed me to the tea I wanted – Kyoto Cherry Rose and gave me samples of a few others to try. She lamented that I wouldn’t be trying them there where they would be made properly and gave me specific instructions on how to brew them at home, the most important being not to let them steep for more than three minutes. I left feeling a bit like Bruce Campbells’ Ash in ‘Army of Darkness’ when he’s instructed to use the three magic words before picking up the Necronomicon. If I let the tea steep longer than three minutes would I unleash an army of skeletons on the Hudson’s Bay Company?

I invited Ashley over for banana bread and tea the next day. We set out some of my Grandmother Currie’s bone china teacups, she had a huge collection as Grandpa bought her a different cup and saucer every time they got into a fight. I searched the cupboards until I found two tea diffusers that I’d had for years but never used, then we got the water boiling and set the timer for three minutes as we steeped our first few selections.

Let me pause here for a second, you are probably picturing my tea-obsessed friend as a young librarian wearing glasses with her hair done up in a tight bun. Not so. Ashley is a sultry black-haired vixen with piercings and is covered in tattoos (one of which is a teapot!) and used to be my partner in crime as Trashley when we kicked ass in the Pillow Fight League.

We started the tasting with one cup of Jasmine tea, one of Tibetan Tiger and one of Rafia. The Jasmine tea’s scent was almost off-putting with it’s heady perfume, similar to but less obnoxious than walking by Lush on Queen St., but the taste was light and pretty. “This is really restorative. If you’re hungover have some of this tea and you’re good to go.” Ashley informed me.

The Tibetan Tiger smelled like chocolate and butterscotch and booze. “I love the subtlety of tea, mostly you get the scent and then after you swallow you get the flavours developing in your mouth. The Tibetan Tiger reminds me of a bourbon tasting my boyfriend, Pat, and I went to. This tea has a lot of the same base notes, caramel, vanilla and warm spices,” Ashley opined.

I asked her about adding milk or sugar to tea. “People tend to add that to black teas and green teas will sometimes get honey. I prefer all my tea straight up, I like the taste of the tea itself. Like this Rafia tea we’re about to taste has dried pineapple in it so you don’t need to add anything to sweeten it.” The Rafia smelled like “teenybopper body spray” according to Ashley but it tasted heavenly. “This is a pure, delicious green tea but the addition of pineapple makes it phenomenal. This makes a terrific iced tea. I’m often very hungover and get puffy eyes so I’ll brew some green tea, drink a few cups to rehydrate, then rinse the bags in cold water and lay them over my eyes. It really works to reduce the puffiness.”

We rinsed our cups and poured more boiling water over some Kyoto Cherry Rose and a Rooibos blend called Provence that contains rosehips, lavender and dried blueberries. The Kyoto Cherry Rose was just as I remembered it from tea-time at Epic, it is the tops when it comes to scent. Ashley claimed that drinking this would make your breath smell like cherries and roses, so it’s worth drinking it just for that.

Finally we had the Provence, a rooibos blend that smells of sweet berries and tobacco while tasting faintly of blueberries and vanilla. The Tea Spot menu states that this tea is naturally calming, aids in digestion and relieves nausea and headaches. This one is my new favourite especially after Ashley says “If you drank two cups of this a day you would undo the damage from ten Bud Lites the night before.” I need to get back to Laurence at the Tea Spot and buy some more ASAP.

Our tea tasting finished we started to clean up, Ashley suggested putting all the used tea leaves into a cheesecloth pouch and putting it the tub the next time I had a bath. “It will smell amazing and your skin will feel great.”

I no longer hate hot beverages, I don’t think I will ever enjoy the strong, bitter flavour of coffee but I think the ethereal taste of some of these teas would definitely enhance my mornings and detoxify my temple.

Epic Fruit Cake:
Click here for an easy-to-print version.

Ingredients:

2 lb. Sweet Butter, Slightly cold, not too soft.
2 lb. Almond Paste.
2 lb. Granulated Sugar.
18 Whole Eggs.
1 lb. 8 oz Five Roses Flour ( sieved )
1 lb. 8 oz Red Whole Maraschino Cherries.
1 lb. 8 oz Green Whole Maraschino Cherries.
1 lb. 8 oz Raisin.

Method:

1. Cream butter, almonds paste and sugar till smooth.
2. Add eggs slowly, and mix well.
3. Combine Cherries, Raisin and Flour together by hand,
and then fold into the above mixture.
4. Put into a prepared grease mould line with silicone paper
And bake at 350 F, approximately 45 minutes.

Optional ingredients may be added. Rum, or any preferable liquor, or add 2 oz of ground cinnamon as desired.

MORE IVY KNIGHT Read All of Ivy's Gremolata articles here. Email Ivy at ladyslenderlegs@gmail.com