Tearooms are making waves in Moscow at the moment. Bored with cafés and coffee, people started looking for something different. And here came the tearooms.
The one I visited today occupies, rather inconspicuously, the back of the ground floor of an office centre in Gogolevsky Boulevard. In the photo you see a glass of Kalmyk smoked tea, a piece of honey cake, and a palette of craft teas served and sold there.
I couldn’t resist the Kalmyk tea as it instantly reminded me of another kind of smoked tea – Lapsang sushong. This was literally my first purchase at a local English supermarket in the summer of 2002. I read the label and realised that I had never even imagined anything like “smoked tea”. I still remember its specific taste, although I haven’t bought or drunk it ever since… well, until today, that is.
This Kalmyk tea was prepared with butter, salt and spices, and it was soft and quite sweet on the palate. Very different indeed from Lapsang, the way I remember it.
