Dropdown menu

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Tuesday Tea Time: The Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse

Two little BFFs in front of the teahouse
Finally! Back to Colorado. Seriously, if I could travel the world doing nothing but having tea, I would. Fortunately, Colorado has some wonderful tea places, and I get to share my favorites with you.

Today's teahouse is the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse.

This amazing place was created out of a mission to better unite Boulder to its sister city in Tajikistan. The whole story can be found here on the teahouse's website. I love that this teahouse represents a culture that we Americans do not typically associate with tea. Yet, as you'll see by reading their website, tea is an important piece of the culture in Central Asia. So it makes me a little sad that most of our teahouses are British when so many of the cultures of the world have such important cultural ties to tea.

Which is why this place was so amazing.

I brought my BFF and our little girls, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the accommodations for kids to be very kid-friendly. Many times, tea places see little girls come bouncing in, and they give you the stern look of doom that makes you wonder why you'd dare bring children to cross their sacred threshold. Not so here. I found the children's menu to be very good (The chicken tenders are grilled, not fried!!) and they even had recommendations for teas that children would like. Except mine, of course, who have refined palates, and drink the good stuff.

Tea menu and regular menu
Teas... um.... yes. They have over 100 teas, and everything we had was quite good. The White Pear Tarte Green tea (which you can order on their website) was, in a word, um, no, you can't possibly give a word to describe how delicious it was. The little girls liked the Fairytale Dreams tea. I didn't have any because I am allergic to chamomile. My big girl, who loves the good stuff, had the Silver Dragon, because I wouldn't let her have her standby, Dragonwell. It was also delicious. We had another tea, but I didn't see it on the online menu, and I can't remember its name. It was also very good.

But the best part was the tea cocktails. Um, yes. Tea AND alcohol, and it was divine. I had some kind of tea mojito, and it was AMAZING. Sara had a gin and tea concoction, which was good, but strong. My word of warning here is that these drinks will knock you flat. We hung around longer than usual simply because I needed the time to be okay to drive home. And yes, I only had one. Plus lunch, plus a couple of pots of tea, plus water.

The food was also excellent. I loved the healthy choices for the kids. If your kids like the typical restaurant junky kids meal food, they will be disappointed. The other two kids had pizza, which looked homemade, and looked nothing like the flying disks you pull out of a freezer. The kids and I thought they were delicious. I had the lamb kubideh, which was really good. My kids also tried some and liked it. My BFF also thought her meal was great- she had the hummus plate and Russian beet salad. As a side note, some friends have been there for breakfast, and they thought the breakfast was excellent as well.


As far as going back, um, yes! We definitely want to go back, and for us, the only drawback is that it's about an hour away, so getting there takes some planning. If you are in the Denver/Boulder area and love tea, this is a place you won't want to miss!
Perfect cup of tea!

No comments: