Fancy Food Show and Specialty Tea Institute

Hi all,

I had a fabulous 3 days last week at the Fancy Food Show and Specialty Tea Institute Class.  I left early on Sunday with my friend Babette Donaldson. Some of you may know her.  She writes the Emma Lea Tea Books we sell at the tea room.  We arrived in San Francisco on Sunday morning about 9:30, just in time for the 10:00 opening of the Fancy Food Show.  We enjoyed walking around and eating our way through the aisles.  My favorite part was the cheese!  I didn’t realize just how much I loved cheese!

After a full day at the show we headed for Ghiradeli Square to the Crown and Crumpet Tea Room for our Western Tea Business Association meeting.  It was nice to see all of our members-many own other tea rooms in Southern California.  I was especially looking forward to the meeting as my favorite tea guy was there-James Norwood Pratt.  It was so great to see him again.  He brought his “better half,” as he calls her-Valerie. She’s just delightful and has such a darling accent-she’s from England.  He also brought Jennifer Sauer who is the author of “Way to Tea,” and is also a photographer.  I enjoyed talking with her and she autographed her book, which Norwood had graciously given me.

On Monday it was a full day of tasting again at the Fancy Food Show.  I enjoyed talking with the tea vendors.  Babette and I slipped off to the Samovar Tea Lounge where I finally had a chance to meet Kim Jage-head of the World Tea Expo. It’s so exciting talking with someone who’s on the cutting edge of tea. It was one of my highlights of last week.  She invited me to be part of the World Tea Expo round robin groups. I’ll be talking to other tea room owners about what I love best! This year will be very busy for me, we will have a booth at the expo selling our cookbooks, I’ll be teaching a class with Babette and now the round robin groups.  I can hardly wait!

My other highlight of the week was the Specialty Tea Institute Class.  I love learning about tea!  We had a full day of oolong teas.  I find it all so fascinating, from the history to the different tastes of oolongs.  By the end, we were all “tea-ed” out.  I realized this as I got in the car to drive home and found myself evaluating the taste of a tic-tac-where does it hit your tongue, etc.  I had to laugh at myself. I couldn’t even enjoy a tic-tac without analyzing how it tasted.

All in all it was a fun 3 days.  I can’t wait to share all of the oolong information with you. If you want to learn more about oolongs and haven’t signed up for our class, you can do it here.

Have a fantastic day!

Amy