Teastories

Vienna has been lacking modern tea places, especially for young people and I am glad that Teastories opened end of March at Westbahnhof in the Westbahnhof shopping area.

Karina and Davy are not only siblings but the two co-founders of Teastories and I got the chance to get to know Teastories better, through an interview with her. Both have an international background, having lived in different cities and wanting to retail something international in Vienna. Nothing better than opening a tea shop, with tea being grown and harvested all over the world!

Karina explained that the quotes that are listed on the teas, mostly come from friends and families and have a very special meaning to them.
I think it is really cute that their tea with the containing stories are in a shelf, which is titled tea library.

Karina mentioned that their concept is really important to them and how closely they worked with their Mexican graphic designers, Anagrama. If you look at their logo below, you notice that the quotation mark can also be seen as two tea leaves. How clever!
All those small details show, how much thoughts both have put into this tea shop.

The foundation is the puristic look, letting the products be in the spotlight and carefully implementing their tea stories. Their declared goal is to reach everybody, not just the classic tea drinkers and I am very positive that they will succeed.

Not only do they offer tea but also lots of tea accessories and best of all, cute cups. You can never have enough tea cups! The “Yours” and “Mine” tea mugs are so cute!

I enjoyed this matcha latte during our conversation. I loved that the matcha was not overly sweet but the matcha taste could have been a bit stronger in my opinion.
Matcha latte and Thai tea are their best-selling drinks, with the matcha being biological from a Japanese supplier.

This man enjoyed listening to our conversation and offered to pose for a picture. So thank you, unknown stranger!
Karina was so nice and gave me a lot of teas to try at home, which I will tell you all about in my next post, to not make this one super long.
So stay tuned :)

PS: If you drop by, don’t forget to get yourself a loyalty card!

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Matcha Eton Mess with Vanilla Cream and Frozen Rapsberries

One of my favourite desserts is Pavlova. Sweet baiser  that is topped with a vanilla cream and fresh fruit.

I actually just took a very basic meringue recipe and added a tablespoon of matcha and tried out the vanilla sauce I bought at the supermarket, which was made by Johanna Maier. She is a very famous Austrian chef and owns the award-winning restaurant Hubertus.

She is very active with the supermarket Spar and even writes recipes for the Spar magazine. Mostly they are a bit too fussy for my taste, I prefer simple recipes at home and gladly pay more in a restaurant than to have to clean up all the mess ;)

I had some leftovers of the matcha Pavolva I made and turned it into a revamped Eton Mess.

The matcha is not very strong but noticeable and I love the combination of vanilla with raspberries.
Generally I prefer raspberries to strawberries :)

On a side note, I love fresh cut flowers in the house and the tulips help to make spring arrive even though it is mostly rainy at the moment.

What is your favourite dessert? :)

Deli Bluem

Somehow I never got to post about Deli Bluem. It newly opened this year in the 8th District and is focused on healthy vegetarian options.

The place is nicely decorated and looks really welcoming and friendly with their cute and floral decoration on the chandeliers.

The food offer reminds me of Hiddenkitchen, where they offer different salads and you can choose a selection of salads and just pay for how many options you take.

I read a lot of positive reviews on the Georgian filled bread, which I naturally had to taste.
After biting into it, you are greeted with a very flavourful filling and as you munch on this bread and try to guess what spices were used, it has gone into your belly already.

I enjoyed the mix of different tastes and textures from the salads but they were a bit bland compared to the Georgian bread.

My beverage was a matcha latte of course. I love matcha and could drink it all the time.

Deli Bluem is a great option for a healthy lunch but is not too expensive, near Josefstädterstraße and the main university.

 

Matcha Mojito

Yay it is Friday again!
The weeks are going by so fast and in nearly a month it is Christmas already.
As always I have nearly all of my presents already  since I dislike shopping with thousands of other people on a Saturday.

The Christmas markets have popped up already and if you are not in the mood yet for Punsch and Glühwein, I can recommend you the matcha mojito I made with the recipe of Bonnie and her absolutely lovely blog, Thirsty for Tea. She is such a creative spirit that comes up with the cutest DIY, lovely recipes and interesting tea reviews.
The matcha mojito is great refreshing cocktail that will wake you up for the week-end and keep the winter blues at bay :)
You probably have most ingredients at home except maybe the matcha. You can buy it at TeeGschwendner near Wollzeile, the many Demmers Teehaus shops or at Cha no ma.

I hope you have a great weekend!

 

Matcha and White Chocolate Cookies

Since a friend of mine requested matcha cookies for her birthday I looked up a recipe on Pinterest and made the one from Just one Cookbook.

The cookies have a nice crumbly texture and the birthday person was happy and satisfied!

I mysteriously never am able to make as many cookies as the people claim I should end up with though.

An unsolved mystery until now ;)

Magic Matcha Custard Cake

Have you heard of the magic custard cake?
You make one dough and in the oven that one mass magically transforms into two different layers. On top is a yummy cake layer and at the bottom a pudding like texture.
I wanted to try this cake out for ages and since my sister came over for a tea afternoon I thought it was time to take on the challenge and see for myself!

I got the Magic Matcha Custard Cake from Raspberri Cupcakes so please check out her wonderful recipe on her website. Maybe I’ll try out a chocolate version next time but I really loved the matcha flavour with a similar mochi texture of a pudding.
Making the dough was not really hard, it does take some time and lots of washing up later though but all is worth it! ;)

Forgot to take pictures of the tea put we had white oolong with rose and lychee flavour from Haas&Haas!

Tea Seminar at Demmers Teehaus Headquarters

This tea seminar which I attended with the Mister was the special event I mentioned in my previous blog post! Bet you did not see that coming ;)
As most of you know, I love tea especially green tea and this seminar was about japanese green teas and matcha.

The seminar took place at the headquarters near the U6 station Siebenhirten and lasted from 6 – 8pm.
The welcome drink we got was an Indian green tea, supposedly to taste the difference between this and the Japanese green teas.

I loved the room we were in, it was like an old tea tin museum. I love old metal tins especially tea tins and have my own small collection I must confess.

The tea tasting was the more exciting part since the Mister and me already knew most of the theoretical stuff.
All in all we tasted 11 teas and I discovered the lovely flavour of the tamaryokucha (also known as guricha), which has a more fruity flavour due to the leaves being steamed.

After the normal green teas we had matcha made in 4 different ways. I loved the matcha banana smoothie but really disliked matcha Sevilla which was matcha with orange juice.
The drink was really unbalanced and somehow the flavours did not fit. Did you ever try matcha with orange juice? If not, do you think it fits or would you try it out?

I sadly did not make many pictures of the tasting itself since my camera was low on battery.. I seriously need to check it more often for important events. Next time then!
Although we drank all those green teas the Mister and I went to sleep very fast and were not affected by the theine. Matcha does help me to stay focus and more concentrated while studying though :)

To sum it up: The teas seminar is more for green tea beginners and people who are new to Japanese green teas. They give a general overview but do not go too much into detail.
Also since it was called a green tea and matcha seminar I thought we would get more in-depth information about the different matcha grades etc. which sadly was not mentioned.
I did learn that the quality of sencha varies widely and can be similar to gyokuro or bancha, depending on the harvesting time. I think it is a bit weird that there can be a huge quality difference and that the date of the harvest is not mentioned on the package. At least I can’t recall ever seeing that information. The price of 25€ is not bad for a two hour seminar since you also get a 10€ voucher for every Demmer Teehaus Shop which is a nice offer I shall use for another tea pot! :)
They have lots of different seminars which you can check out on their page here.

 

 

Instagram Food Pics

It is time for another Instagram food post to make you hungry and recommend some yummy places in Vienna!

One of my must-order dishes at Fusan. Succulent sea bass with crispy edges on smoky wok vegetables. So yummy and healthy!

Delicious sticky rice burger with a chicken patty at Spear. The fries were so delicious and crispy and fit surprisingly well with the rice.

The tasty almond croissant from tart’a tata which is ever so often sold out since it is only baked once a day. So be quick but leave me one please! ;)

Delicious and sinful cupcakes from brass monkey, a more detailed post will follow. The place is lovely!

Matcha white choco latte from my go-to place for drinking matcha, cha no ma.

Hope you all have a nice week ahead of you!

 

my Christmas aftermath

It was crazy warm here in Vienna for Christmas, we had 11°Degree and it felt like spring.

Nonetheless I was surprisingly in Christmas mood and met Erwin at Cha no ma for matcha and for giving out my present of course.
I forgot how delicious the matcha white choco latte is, I could really taste the white choco in the drink which I loved.

 

We had the past few years sushi for christmas but this time we made salmon sandwiches which was a nice change but I do prefer the sushi ;)
Here is our christmas tree: 100% plastic and always looking great and green, noo hassle of buying a new one for christmas.

And our after christmas brunch, Uruguayan beef roast with different kinds of salad and potatoes.

And yesterday I finally could watch the Doctor Who Christmas special which left me in tears of Matt Smith’s departure.
The scene with Amy cracked me up. All in all the episode was not that well written in my opinion but there were some heartbreaking scenes in there.

Dangos with white chocolate and matcha dip

First of all I am not really sorry about all this matcha spam. Maybe a tiny bit.

Lisa, Jules and me decided to make those dangos after I showed them this recipe: http://scandifoodie.blogspot.co.at/2010/07/dango-with-matcha-chocolate-fondue_20.html

The texture of the dango did not seem right because it was far from a fluffy mochi and a lot more dense. I think another method would have resulted in better and softer dango but this chocolate matcha dip is heavenly! We all agreed that this was the best part and had to hold back not to lick the bowl since Lisa wanted to save some dangos with dip for her sister.
Good I have left over high quality white chocolate, I can make some more matcha dip just for myself hehe