Milk Oolong Tea options near Chelsea NYC : A Half-Assed Report
Milk Oolong tea is like a magic trick. It comes in the form of little pellets.
But when you put the pellets in hot water, they bloom into full-on leaves. Like big leaves. Like I always put too many pellets in my tea cup and wind up with a swamp of half-furled leaves. The tea earned its nom de plume because it supposedly tastes milky or buttery. I'm not sure about that, but it does have a unique flavor. I like tea with a unique flavor. Life gets boring otherwise.
I first encountered the Milk Oolong at Bosie Tea Parlor, back when it was on Morton Street. I had popped in one day and miraculously, the place was not mobbed. One of the people who worked there had 30 seconds to help me pick something new out of the tea catalog.
I'm conflicted about Bosie Tea Parlor's to-go service if you must know. On the one hand, it's kind of nice to enter a parlor of tea. I love tea and I love a parlor, so the whole idea appeals. But here's the thing: it's the wait staff who also supplies the manpower behind the retail tea counter. And they use the same credit card set up so you get asked to leave a tip.
#Awkward.
On the one hand, probably the wait staff at Bosie is not being paid minimum normal wage, but that "assuming you'll get tips" less than minimum normal wage.
On the other hand, the customer-point-of-view hand, I went in for the retail and I'm being charged like I'm sitting at a table having things brought to me.
In the end, I always leave a tip. But I'm never happy about it.
I leave a tip because I feel sorry for the person helping me and not getting any monetary reward for spending their time with me, as opposed to the monetary reward they could have gotten by fawning over someone at a table. I'm sensitive to their opportunity cost. What can I say, I have an economics degree.
In case you've lost track, we're talking about Milk Oolong tea here. And Bosie is out of it as often as they have it, so I rarely buy it there anymore. Who wants to walk the whole way over there, wait in line for one of the waitstaff to find a spare moment, wait while they jiggle the jar off the top shelf and open it up, only to announce that there's not enough to sell.
But the lavender tea at Bosie? That's awfully fine and I haven't been able to locate another brand that I like as well. BTW - I like a lot of things at Dual Spice, but their tea is not one of them. It's usually old and not great quality. This includes Dual's lavender tea which is how I got off on this tangent. (It also includes Dual's matcha tea which is some of the worst yellow-ass putty I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing.)
Milk Oolong Option #2 is to go to Sullivan Street tea and spices. But one time I trecked over there after they were out of Milk Oolong at Bosie. And they were out of Milk Oolong at Sullivan Street too. So I crossed off Option #2 in my little black book of tea. Or my little Oolong book of tea. I was going to say my little green book of tea, but that would be incorrect. Oolong tea, while green, is not considered a green tea.
It was my foray onto Amazon in search of Milk Oolong that revealed shopping for Milk Oolong requires considerably more forethought and fine-print reading than previously realized.
Who knew that:
In the end, I purchased and finished a whole bag of this Milk Oolong on Amazon. It's very flavorful. It's not supposed to have additives or pesticides. More study is required, but it might give me a headache.
The thing with tea coming directly from China with no trusted middle-people to monitor the goings-on is that seriously, who believes a word some rando in China writes in their ads? That's tantamount to unquestioningly believing something your step-mother-and-law copied from a Russian bot and posted on Facebook.
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| Milk Oolong Magic |
But when you put the pellets in hot water, they bloom into full-on leaves. Like big leaves. Like I always put too many pellets in my tea cup and wind up with a swamp of half-furled leaves. The tea earned its nom de plume because it supposedly tastes milky or buttery. I'm not sure about that, but it does have a unique flavor. I like tea with a unique flavor. Life gets boring otherwise.
I first encountered the Milk Oolong at Bosie Tea Parlor, back when it was on Morton Street. I had popped in one day and miraculously, the place was not mobbed. One of the people who worked there had 30 seconds to help me pick something new out of the tea catalog.
I'm conflicted about Bosie Tea Parlor's to-go service if you must know. On the one hand, it's kind of nice to enter a parlor of tea. I love tea and I love a parlor, so the whole idea appeals. But here's the thing: it's the wait staff who also supplies the manpower behind the retail tea counter. And they use the same credit card set up so you get asked to leave a tip.
#Awkward.
On the one hand, probably the wait staff at Bosie is not being paid minimum normal wage, but that "assuming you'll get tips" less than minimum normal wage.
On the other hand, the customer-point-of-view hand, I went in for the retail and I'm being charged like I'm sitting at a table having things brought to me.
In the end, I always leave a tip. But I'm never happy about it.
I leave a tip because I feel sorry for the person helping me and not getting any monetary reward for spending their time with me, as opposed to the monetary reward they could have gotten by fawning over someone at a table. I'm sensitive to their opportunity cost. What can I say, I have an economics degree.
In case you've lost track, we're talking about Milk Oolong tea here. And Bosie is out of it as often as they have it, so I rarely buy it there anymore. Who wants to walk the whole way over there, wait in line for one of the waitstaff to find a spare moment, wait while they jiggle the jar off the top shelf and open it up, only to announce that there's not enough to sell.
But the lavender tea at Bosie? That's awfully fine and I haven't been able to locate another brand that I like as well. BTW - I like a lot of things at Dual Spice, but their tea is not one of them. It's usually old and not great quality. This includes Dual's lavender tea which is how I got off on this tangent. (It also includes Dual's matcha tea which is some of the worst yellow-ass putty I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing.)
Milk Oolong Option #2 is to go to Sullivan Street tea and spices. But one time I trecked over there after they were out of Milk Oolong at Bosie. And they were out of Milk Oolong at Sullivan Street too. So I crossed off Option #2 in my little black book of tea. Or my little Oolong book of tea. I was going to say my little green book of tea, but that would be incorrect. Oolong tea, while green, is not considered a green tea.
It was my foray onto Amazon in search of Milk Oolong that revealed shopping for Milk Oolong requires considerably more forethought and fine-print reading than previously realized.
Who knew that:
- Milk Oolong tea is well-known for its additives and so-called "natural flavors" which give me headaches and which I diligently attempt to avoid?
- There are different grades of Milk Oolong tea depending on how high up in the mountains it was grown? Apparently the best Milk Oolong comes from the highest possible altitude.
- There are different grades of Milk Oolong as rated by the companies selling their own Milk Oolong. I don't mean that anyone gives themselves a "B" grade, seriously who would give themselves a B? This is America. Modesty is not the best policy here. So sellers just give their teas various "A" grades. Like A+ AA+ AAA+++. I'm not entirely sure how this scale works but I assume the more As and the more +s the better.
- Milk Oolong's real name is Jin Xuan tea and it was developed in 1980. I was unhappy to learn this. It doesn't seem very tea parlor-y to be drinking something cooked up in the 80's along with big hair and neon pants.
In the end, I purchased and finished a whole bag of this Milk Oolong on Amazon. It's very flavorful. It's not supposed to have additives or pesticides. More study is required, but it might give me a headache.
The thing with tea coming directly from China with no trusted middle-people to monitor the goings-on is that seriously, who believes a word some rando in China writes in their ads? That's tantamount to unquestioningly believing something your step-mother-and-law copied from a Russian bot and posted on Facebook.
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