Afternoon tea in Berlin at TeeTeaThé

Although in the last months I focused exclusively on luxury afternoon tea options, in Berlin and not only, I decided a couple of weeks ago to find out an affordable high tea menu in the city. After some enquiries among my tea lover friends and some personal research, I headed to TeeTeaThé for spending some time outdoors in the sun. It is situated relatively close to the U-Bahn Eisenacherstrasse, on a street with many interesting coffees, small restaurants and bookstores. 

Although the indoors space looks quite well maintained, the outside tables - around 3 - are a bit worned out. As the good weather lasts only a few days the year, the outdoors furniture was not considered a great investment. For the beginning, I ordered a Mangosonne black tea, a Ronnefeld tea rich in fruity juicy aromas with a predominant mango flavour that makes you forget the strong influence of the black tea. It was brought with a small blue hourglass that helped me calculate when it is the right time to drink the tea. The difference between the cold and warm tea was pretty big, and I did regret for not drinking my tea faster.  

 In addition to the coffee space, there is also a big room distributing various teas as well as colourful cups.

With so many colourful options, it is difficult to make a right choice of the best cup. For the long waiting time, the guests are offered the possibility to read some of the latest publications in English, many of them with topics related to food and expat life in Berlin. 

The classical tiered plates were brought a big late, after the tea was already cold. Although the overall composition respected the classical formula of afternoon tea, everything was prepared without the smallest care for the little details. Slices of apple, not very fresh, some veggies threw up around the plate, salmon sandwiches prepared in the haste. The quiche with corn, eggs and peas was fresh, but without a special taste. The scones were fresh too, most probably the best element of the afternoon tea, and so was the jam.

If the meal as such was more or less edible and the tea was unique, the service was very unfriendly, with long time of waiting between the tea and the afternoon tea and some out of order remarks and attitudes. Maybe I should give a new try a next time, probably during the winter, at least for trying a new tea sort. 

What about a Tajik tea?

My Thursday cup of tea

I tried to have a tea at the Tajik teahouse at least twice: once it was too early and once it was too crowded, on an Sunday early winter afternoon. All I saw then were some blonde kids running around in socks, around the long line of people waiting. I don't like to wait for food/drinks so I went away. The Tajik teahouse was mentioned several times in the conversations with my friends when thinking about a place to meet, but I was able to really make the 'adventure' of visiting the place and tasting the tea only yesterday afternoon.

It reminded me of an old book about Marco Polo

Meanwhile, the teahouse moved from the old location, near the Humbold University, at the Festungsgraben Palais, to the Kulturhof, a hidden interior place at Oranienburgerstrasse, where there are many galeries and even a cookies machine (out-of-order at the time of my visit).

Compared with my earlier memories about the place, it looked to quiet so before pushing the knob to enter I asked some people building up some tent if it is open and entered only when I received 2 serious nods that it is.

The attractions of the place

The first thing you should do by entering is to leave your shoes. The next is wait to be guided for a place to stay: either normal tables with chairs or cushions near the low tables. I tried the second exotic variant but as in the case of my experiences in Japan, after 20 minutes your may feel your feet a bit tensed. There were not too many people and there were at least 2 free cushions' spots. 

On the cusion or on the chair, you decide

The place was looking like in the pictures illustrating the articles about it. Colourful cushions, wooden columns, traditional paintings on the wall. The interior was presented at a trade fair in the 1970s in Leipzig - at the time GDR - and offered as a present from the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan - member of the Soviet Union - to the brothers in arms from Berlin. I don't know too much about Tajik teas, but I did not see anything that may remind it on the menu. The offer starts with several Russian teas, including a Russian tea ceremony, where you are offered for around 8.50 some cookies and a pint of Moskovskaya. Lommonossow tea looks like a sweet memory from the time of the Soviet, introduced as 'light and smoth tea from the Eastern banks of the Black Sea', and including jam and rum raisins. I also found tempting the Beduinen Tee, that offers for 4.90 Euro: Assam tea and peppermint tea with peppermint liqueur. 

A reminded that I should buy a samovar one day

If you decide to take your children with at the tea, be sure that you buy them a herbal mix with fennel that will make them sleepy soon. Each cup of tea is served with some small cookies, but if you want more pastry, there are many variants of Russian cuisine, among others piroggen, bliny, pelmen. 

As for me, I preferred to take a cherry blossom Japanese tea, light and delicious also because of the candy black sugar. For almost 2 hours I enjoyed a nice conversation while smelling the flavour of the teacup. I would like to come back from some more tea testing and cozy chatting with my girlfriends.