Tea, yum cha and tea-tails at the Oriental Tea House

I’m loving Melbourne so far. However, I will never be a fully fledged Melbournite as I have one fatal flaw – I don’t like coffee! This is without a doubt a coffee lovers city and there are coffee shops and stalls on just about every street corner. Unfortunately this is where the Brit in me comes out. I am a tea drinker through and through – coffee just doesn’t do it for me. I get all jittery and jumpy the minute I have even a latte so avoid it like the plague. I was meeting up with fellow travel blogger Nicole from Bitten by The Travel Bug and suggested tea or vino. Luckily she picked up on the no coffee and suggested we meet up at the Oriental Tea House in Melbourne Central.

The selection of teas was amazing and the food evening more so. Yum cha of all kinds from dumplings & pork buns to Peking duck pancakes to chocolate dumplings. The food was fantastic and I will be definitely heading there again to try out more delights from the menu. It’s not a place for the budget conscious out there though – well I should put it another way. If you can restrain yourself from trying lots of things on the menu and just go for a few and one cup of tea then it’s great if you’re on a budget. If you’re like me and can’t resist trying lots of different things, ordering different teas and trying the tea-tails (cocktails in a tea pot) too then it can get a little pricey. For the 2 of us it ended up being just over $100. Then we might have done a bit of retail therapy in the shop too buying up the lovely teas we had sampled and the awesome glasses to drink it out of – I’m still lusting after the beautiful glass teapots too.

I loved that they had dessert dumplings to try as well. My favourite was definitely the dark chocolate ones covered in sesame seeds – I thought the white chocolate looked a bit like ‘balls’ to me! lol