On the weekend we went for dinner at our usual sushi joint. It's a nice, sit-down place: neither a hole-in-the-wall take-out joint with a couple tables, nor a fancy high-end "experience" place, but a decent place, offering both Japanese and Chinese food (you can't specialise too much in a small town. )
We always get good food there, and did on the weekend too.
But when we sat down we asked our waitress for "green tea ... Japanese green tea." What she brought us was ... um ... yuck! It was brown with a tinge of red ... sort of what my green gunpowder tea looks like when I leave the teapot on the stove and fall asleep in front of the TV for a few hours ... and tasted about the same. SWMBO and I both thought we had been given old, burnt tea that had been hanging around since lunchtime. Our waitress, bless her heart, insisted that it was fresh "Japanese tea" and some sort of special variety. Um ... yeah.
On the off-chance that she actally knew whereof she spoke, does this sound like some sort of Japanese-style tea to anyone?
(FWIW, the waitress did not speak very good English, which kept us from discussing the tea much. But she did substitute what I would consider a normal green tea for us, so it ended well. Interesting story ... the waitress also had some sort of mental block going on ... SWMBO ordered a couple of rolls, one tamago nigiri, and a plate of tempura ... the waitress proceeded to warn her that she only got one piece of tempura with that order ... at this point, please insert "who's on first" conversation between me and the waitress where every time she means to say "tamago" she says "tempura" ... without realising it ... even when pointing at the tamago on the menu. )
We always get good food there, and did on the weekend too.
But when we sat down we asked our waitress for "green tea ... Japanese green tea." What she brought us was ... um ... yuck! It was brown with a tinge of red ... sort of what my green gunpowder tea looks like when I leave the teapot on the stove and fall asleep in front of the TV for a few hours ... and tasted about the same. SWMBO and I both thought we had been given old, burnt tea that had been hanging around since lunchtime. Our waitress, bless her heart, insisted that it was fresh "Japanese tea" and some sort of special variety. Um ... yeah.
On the off-chance that she actally knew whereof she spoke, does this sound like some sort of Japanese-style tea to anyone?
(FWIW, the waitress did not speak very good English, which kept us from discussing the tea much. But she did substitute what I would consider a normal green tea for us, so it ended well. Interesting story ... the waitress also had some sort of mental block going on ... SWMBO ordered a couple of rolls, one tamago nigiri, and a plate of tempura ... the waitress proceeded to warn her that she only got one piece of tempura with that order ... at this point, please insert "who's on first" conversation between me and the waitress where every time she means to say "tamago" she says "tempura" ... without realising it ... even when pointing at the tamago on the menu. )