Mumbai: Are you in the mood to experience France? Or are you an ardent tea lover? In either case, we have found a place that you may call ‘paradise’. Located in the heart of Mumbai, next to Flora fountain in Fort, Tasse de Thé is a place that could be equivalent to ‘heaven for tea-lovers’.
Yes, you read that right. If tea was to be served in ‘tea heaven’ it would probably look like this. Now there’s a reason why we are saying this, and that reason is the experience this place has to offer. Oh, and by the way, Tasse de Thé is a French term that literally translates to ‘cup of tea’.
Being located at one of the busiest streets in Mumbai, Tasse de Thé deserves full marks for being a well designed Parisian themed café with teleportation capabilities.
Now, of course, we are exaggerating things here, but it is true! The moment that door with the beautiful golden carvings opens, and you step your first foot forth in the property, you do tend to forget (within moments) that you are in Mumbai.
All of this is thanks to its wonderful interior with pleasing pastel colours, French arcs and an array of chandeliers.
If that isn’t enough to get you impressed, their co-founder, Jiten Sheth informed The Big Binge that this place offers 300 different variants of tea leaves! And the number of blends and infusions it offers to go with them could probably go well into thousands! Surely these facts might be overwhelming to many, but hey the tea aficionados in Mumbai have finally got a place they could fall in love with.
While tea is their main offering, they do serve some lip-smacking ‘vegetarian only’ food. The cuisines they serve include Italian, American and Mexican. We tried their Mexican offerings, as it is rare to find authentic Mexican flavoured food here in Mumbai. We must say, we weren’t disappointed, even though the food was all vegetarian!
Here are our top 5 recommendations from their scrumptious menu, that you should add to your ‘must have’ list:
5) High Tea: All tea connoisseurs in town should go try their ‘High Tea’. We tried their three-tier high tea with some soothing Jasmine tea, and we couldn’t ask for a better start to our evening. Everything served on their high tea platter was fresh and flavourful.
4) VooDoo Child: Chipotle sweet potato tacos with guacamole, need we say anything more? Yes, they were richly flavourful and tasted the way they should. The taco had the right amount of crispiness in each bite and the guacamole too lived up to our expectation. The dish was well presented too!
3) Ebony and Ivory: These sweet potato wasabi sticks are so rare to find in Mumbai, we felt we should frame one from the pack. The zest of the wasabi kicked in right proportions and the crisps came paired with mayonnaise (which we thankfully acknowledge) felt freshly prepared.
2) Maria Maria: For the main course, we went with a dish that served Mexican cottage cheese steak with Cajun spice sauce. Again, no complaints about the quality and taste of food served. And just like we did for VooDoo Child, we liked the presentation of this dish.
1) Are you ready for love?: Okay, it is time to mention the star attraction of the day. This ‘gulkand tiramisu’ (you did read that right) stole the show for us. It was so good that we showered praise for it to its co-founder, only to learn that it took him 45-days of trying and testing different variants of this dessert before he finally gave a thumbs up to the one being served at our tables now.
Lastly, if we had to be a bit snobbish and suggest an area of improvement, it would be to get themselves a serving staff that looks more polished. But then, we were hit by a terrible dawn of realisation. And that realisation was, this isn’t a café that is located in a 5-star-hotel. That said, if they work on staffing better servers, they truly deserve to be located in 5-star-hotel premises!
The food, the ambiance, the variety of tea offered, and the charming variety of tea accessories available here, all of it packages together an experience that does give you a lot of reasons to keep coming back.
(editor@thebigbinge.com)
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