West China Tea - The Patio (Outside Tasting)

Great place. However, don't expect to get English tea time. There are no biscuits with clotted cream or Tim Tams or whatever. It is primarily a Chinese teahouse that focuses solely on being that. So, no other foods to go along with the tea be will served. And that was actually what I was hoping find! (And, I was very surprised to find some quality tea to be honest.)

Closest thing to this that I've been to in the US was Dobra Tea in Northampton, Massachusetts (putting aside a real Chinese teahouse in Toronto's chinatown area). However, Dobra Tea also sells food & other tisanes. I don't know of anything like West China Tea in Texas. There's a place in Dallas (The Cultured Cup), which sells some traditional tea, but it's mostly a buy-to-bring-home type of place – you can't actually sit down and drink a couple pots of tea. (And, the Cultured Cup folks also don't seem to know as much about tea compared to West China Tea.)

As you can guess from the name, the focus is on China. I don't think he has any tea produced in Taiwan or Japan or India.

So, West China Tea is a very welcome addition to the Texas landscape. Being in Austin with its college student population is probably helping this place to stay in business. Americans just aren't so into tea unfortunately. However, the owner seems to have a goal of educating the public. If he can foster a tea culture, that would be great. Not everyone may appreciate the educational part of this place though? Not sure. Anyway, he seems to offer tea classes or tea sampling groups.

Besides tea, you can buy tea cups, teapots (including traditional yixing clay ones), tea sets (cups+pot+tray), chahais (little decanter-ish containers for pouring directly into your cup), puer tea picks, and tea 'pets' (these are little clay sculptures that you can pour water over for fun, it's a weird idea...).

I brought my mother to try some tea there for my first visit. Personally, I think places like this kinda tend to skimp on the tea served on location. (That was also true of Dobra Tea in Northampton, Massachusetts.) But, you could always get two orders of tea for the same pot. Anyway, we tried some traditionally roasted oolong that I had never heard of. (It wasn't one of the famous ones, possibly the tea was renamed by the shop? I don't know.) It was good. I also bought a small 1oz bag of green tea and another of shuixian. The shuixian was particularly good. At this time, he only had these small 1oz bags for sale and said that there wasn't really any discount for buying larger quantities.

At a later time, I went just to buy some tea to take home. By now, he had changed the name of this shop to what it is now (West China Tea). And, thankfully, he had larger sized bags. (At least 100 grams is best for me.) He had mentioned when I went the first time that he had an aged dahongpao (fairly expensive). So, I got some of this, some tieguanyin with a very dark roast (like they prefer in Hong Kong), and a old bush shuixian. These were also good teas. The tieguanyin may be a bit dark for some people, but it's nice. (I think this one is best steeped the gongfu way.) Both this shuixian and the dahongpao have a little storage taste, which may not suit all tastes, but it is only slight. Liked both. All good buys.

He seems to have a good bit of puer, which is not really my kind of tea (it's overpriced all over the world & usually not aged enough). I haven't sampled enough of his greens to be able to say much. (He didn't write the harvest year on the bag I bought but assured me it was from that current year.) But, since his oolong selection has been good so far, I would expect his green selection to be high quality. He also has black tea, but I'm not much of a drinker of that really.

I hope this place remains here as long as I live in Texas. If I lived in Austin, I would probably end up buying every one of his oolongs. He has a website, too (although it's down today for some reason, so I decided to write a review instead of looking at the website....)

Ignore the bad reviews. This place is great and the people there are incredibly kind. Maybe if they would drink more tea then they would understand.

This is one of the best atmospheres in town to hang out and have a good conversation. Great tea and great service!

The most amazing community and highest quality tea! Highly recommend the space

I came into get some tea, and the tea is good, don't get me wrong. However I was less than impressed with the service I received. The lady working that day ask "if I was a tea person" which seemed like a strange question. I told her that I liked tea, but was just interested in purchasing a bag. Once I let the employee know that I was not there to sit down and have tea she seemed to write me off as not being a tea person. Once I had chosen my tea and went to check out she was borderline rude as I handed her my card.

3 stars for the good tea, would easily be 5 if the service had been better.