We've all been bamboozled!

[Zanaspus]

Friday night, my wife and I had dinner at a Chinese restaurant I'd not eaten at in years. As I often do in such a setting, I ordered hot tea fully expecting the bulk oolong smoky stuff or the cloying jasmine green stuff that virtually every Chinese restaurant seems to serve.

When the tea arrived at the table, I was blown away! I knew from the initial scent that this was Wuyi oolong. After a few sips, I was delighted to realize that it was indeed Da Hong Pao!

Of course, had I been given leaves and hot water, I could have coaxed more from the tea, but this was beyond not half-bad, it was good! I drank several cups and remembering an old topic of the day on tea chat, I decided I'd have a little tea conversation with my waiter.

When he returned with the check, I pointed to my empty cup and inquired, " Was this Da Hong Pao?" He tilted his head and looked quizzically at me, so I took a step back and asked, "What kind of tea was this?" To this he replied "oolong." I said, " I know it's oolong, but what kind of oolong?" His reply, "Oolong tea. There is only one kind. oolong tea."

And to think, all this time I've been paying top dollar for several kinds of oolong when all I had to do is buy one.

[Mr Wigster]

Haha, great story.

Maybe you should go back with some resources and show him. .

[cyberhoofer]

Maybe you should go back with some Darjeeling Oolong

[Tead Off]

Why didn't you ask him to bring out some leaf for you to look at?

[Charlotte]

That is WAY to funny!

[DJ3riple]

HAHAHAH, poor guy

lucky you though, I don't have any local chinese restaurants that serve anything close to DHP

[AdamMY]

It might sort of make sense in a "There is only one real oolong way." But I don't agree with that statement, but who knows how some people feel about their favorite teas.

But I want to know what all the other oolongs really are, if there is only one oolong.

[Intuit]

Nooo. I think the waiter meant, 'we have only one kind of tea, oolong'.

Fancy that, a Chinese restaurant serving a decent DHP! The typical Chinese restaurants here (rural inland PNW) are a joke, to be avoided.

The local Japanese restaurant prides itself on its finely prepared, 'authentic sushi', yet serves the cheapest of green teas, either woefully weak (teabag dragged through, briefly) to tepid and wretchedly oversteeped (teabag has lolled about for ages). Undrinkable.

The new Korean restaurant serves what they told me is Jasmine tea. I'm not actually sure that it IS tea. It's Jasmine-flavored something.

[entropyembrace]

Perhaps it's a jasmine tisane?

[JillDragon]

Perhaps it's a jasmine tisane?

That sounds even worse. Jasmine is too strong and perfumy to drink by itself.

[brandon]

I had a really good Shui Xian delivered at a Chinese restaurant the other day.

[the nub]

LOL! The waiter's response is not surprising. If you had said "Is this Da Hong Pao oolong?" I'm sure he would have said "yes". He probably would have said "yes" if you asked "Is this Ti Guan Yin oolong?" To top it off, if you're pronunciation was not correct to his dialect, you will always get the tilted head response

[AlexZorach]

This reminds me of one time I went to a Chinese restaurant and was served an outstanding black tea. When I asked what kind of tea it was, the waiter said:

"It is Chinese tea."

[rabbit]

Same EXACT thing happened to me, I asked if the green tea I was drinking was longjing and the waitress said "it's green tea" and when I said "but what TYPE of green tea" she just looked confused and said "only one type: green tea!"

[Chip]

*tilts head*

Does this sort of thing happen to everyone? I posted this already elsewhere, but at a Chinese/Japanese restuarant (code for owned by Chinese and also serving Japanese). We were served tea (in humungous coffee mugs that were "imported" from the "dollar store" next door, they literally said coffee, capacino, etc. in big bold black lettering on the outside. They had to hold 16-20 ounces ... or more. And weighed a ton ... or more.

The tea was not bad, but I could not quite put my finger on what it was, sort of like a dark floral pu or oolong. So we asked the female Chinese server what it was. "tea", no what kind of tea, "tea, hot" no what type, "hot tea, Chinese"

Gave up at this point. And may have given her a tilted head look.

Face it, we are not normal tea drinkers to 99.9% of the world's population.