Not for All the Tea in China

	I didn't even care enough to take a good picture.

Straight and to the point, dear readers: Sweet Dreams Teashop is a terrible place. Granted, the coconut coffee is pretty dope- once in a while. But one out of a lot doesn't count. Not this time. No way. There's too much goin' bad in the joint, and I know because I've been reluctantly going there for years (usually in the company of others). The last straw came today when I found a load of gift certificates for the place my sister gave me that I inadvertently left in a pile of papers because I knew I wouldn't be going back unless I had a good reason- i.e., free money. I.e., free tea. That sad, I'm not too bent out of shape with the quality of bulk tea I bought today - sencha- which as it is, tastes flat, generic and doesn't have that dewy, fresh cut grass flavour a good sencha usually does. As far as I know, and know I usually do, it was the first proper bubble tea place in Kitchener-Waterloo blazing the trails of trendy Taiwanese bubble tea places. Obviously, over the years other places followed. Why this place has lasted so long, I'll never know- though I do have my theories. People just go for the bubble tea, which as it turns out tastes like nothing more than powder shaken and mixed with hot water. accompanied by a chalky gelatin aftertaste and served by supposedly cute teenage girls. No boys. I'll leave any gender assumptions to you, because this is ground one has to tread very very lightly on.

If anyone does order anything edible they'll find it processed and more than generic. There is one thing I've always eyed: a slab of poorly cut bread smeared with a chocolate spread. Looks good, probably tastes stale. I'm balzy enough to say Sweet Dreams depends on absolutely nothing but poor palettes and customer ignorance in order to stay in business and maybe the bubbly girls that serve there- not that they're all bubbly. If bubbly meant socially inept and lacking in food industry experience and it was merely a word to euphemise the poorest kind of workers than sure, bubbly. Definitely bubbly. So much so that I was overcharged for the tea I bought and on top of that, taxed for it (I asked the cashier if she ever learned about the Boston Tea Party. Not fair? I didn't care. I was exploited. Nowhere in the Great White North are people taxed for tea. Ridiculous.) I, of course, came back and humbly asked that they get their heads out of their asses, stop depending on their personalities to overshadow their poor service and give me what was owed.

Yes comrades, nothing here but dirty glass mugs, poorly steeped tea, dilapidated ceilings, processed meals, too many teenagers, extremely loud music (I can only hope whoever runs the place doesn't assume that a bubble tea shop can operate like a bar where music is purposely played loud to eliminate conversation and cause parched mouths to buy more after yelling over each other- tea shops are places to relax, after all) and a character that depends on nothing more than a kind of blanket orientalism supposedly defining that which is Taiwan and its innovative tea. "But Weezee," you ask "Don't you like poor dilapidated places?" Don't get me wrong dear, reader, I do; that is, when I see it is genuine, when I see it is sincere. When it really is an issue of different cultural taste that othering patrons fail to understand and label as beneath them. But for a place like this, born and bred, as far as I'm concerned, in and for the West, that is no excuse. I won't even bother with the prices. Nothing's worth anything there, unless you're foolish enough to pay for it. I hate to say all of this, but it was only a matter of time before I stopped my own passivity, especially when so many people, and perhaps even you my dear readers, inadvertently decide to go. I just couldn't be that socially irresponsible in the world of food. Not for the all tea in China.

Sweet Dreams Tea Shop14-170 University Avenue West
Waterloo, ON N2L 3E9
(519) 747-2442

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