New Tea House at the Huntington Gardens

This weekend I got to preview the new Garden of Flowing Fragrance that will be open to the public on February 23rd at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. It's been under construction for many years, and I've gotten to watch a good portion of that construction in my various visits to the gardens there. I'm happy to report that the new gardens are absolutely beautiful and inspiring.

Perhaps even more exciting, though, is the fact that there is a new Tea House at the Chinese gardens. The old Rose Garden Tea Room with its traditional-English-tea-turned-buffet-style was already one of my favorite stops in the area, so I couldn't wait to try out the new Tea House.

As it turns out, neither could a lot of other people there that day, so there was a hefty line. But, no worries -- unlike the limited indoor seating of the Rose Garden, the new Tea House simply handed you your tea and left you free to find a seat among the many tables spread out on a large platform overlooking the gardens, so it actually moved fairly quickly.

For reference, I've included a photo of their current menu below.

Tea selection and serving - 3.5/5.0
Not many teas featured here, but some very good picks among them. (And quite an expansion from the usual 2-3 tea selection available at the Rose Garden.) Most of them are, fortunately, loose leaf, and are served by putting the leaves directly on a tea cup and adding hot water. The good news is that they provide hot water refills (it'd be a sin not to, with some of the loose leaf teas they're serving!). The less-good news is that you have to get up from whatever beautiful garden view you've found and walk back to the Tea House in order to get that refill. (And if you go through 5 or 6 cups, as one ought to with, say, their oolong, that makes for a lot of losing your seat. If anyone at Huntington is reading this -- how about some tea pots with hot water to go with the tea service? :) )

And, of course, the disadvantage of serving loose leaf tea directly on the cup is that, if you're not into super-strong/overbrewed tea, you'd better not be into contemplation or slow sipping, either.

We tried both the Jade Spiral Spring Tea (a green tea, with pale green, long thin leaves that made for two good infusions; a very clear taste, though not quite strong enough to punch through the snacks they served), and the Flowing Fragrance Oolong (large, deep green leaves with a strong and incredibly sweet and flowery taste; definitely my favorite of the two, and could easily have made it through more refill brewings than I had the determination to go back to the tea house for).

Overall, for $2.99, a pretty good value.

Food - 2.0/5.0
They pretty much had two options: very greasy, and very greasy vegetarian. Bonus points for having a vegetarian option (not often I find a vegetarian pork bun; looks like they used mushrooms, and actually made for a pretty decent bun), but the what-looked-like-a-dumpling and the what-was-probably-an-egg-roll tasted like they'd made buddies with a whole vat of oil, and while it is possible to brew tea strong enough to cut through anything, this really wasn't worth it. (Or, for that matter, worth $8.59 for the very small portion.)

However, this was their first day, so maybe they'll get the kinks in the recipes (or cooking method) worked out over time.

Atmosphere - 5.0/5.0
Can't beat sitting by a lake within a beautiful garden on a fresh, warm February day (gotta love California weather...).