Some days, I get really down on myself. Some days, I get really hungry. And some days, I remember that if I don’t eat, I can get really down on myself. Today was starting to be one of those days. Remembering the terrible news of my dear brother’s decision to move out of town and in with the love of his life made me desperate to fill the emptiness that hung where my own heart once was. Yes, dear listeners, even one thousand crescent kicks under the still moon the night before weren’t nearly enough to quell the feeling that I had been left alone, platonically sojourned in a city where a close comrade and I had drank tea, learned kung fu, and eaten copious amounts of bad Chinese food. Those were my salad days.
And if I can aggrandize this story of brotherhood any further I will mention that I intended to eat my pain away with the worst, most dangerous Chinese-Canadian food I could find. Fortunately for me, a pang of recollection prevented me from ordering the stuff I know sits so heavily in my stomach and not so happily in my heart. And like that, I was called, as if by the Buddha himself, to a place I had been years before, where my dear brother once tried vegetarianism, and your dear narrator came to be comforted by him, all while stuck in an abyss of graduate work. It was then, after some tea and pickled cabbage when I realized that no matter what the world was like at least there was food; and that no matter how hard things may be to take, when everything’s all said and done, the world is still there. And, if we’re lucky enough, the places we go to eat are still there too, offering sanctuary like temples in some kung fu flick.
I won’t keep you in anymore suspense; I’m speaking pretty tongue in cheek at this point anyway. Just let me say this, everything I write is true and comes from what little heart I have left. Tenterhooks, my friends, tenterhooks.
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If you’re feeling a little bit of spiritual abandon, or looking, like I did today, for some connection to a more nostalgic past, it might suit your poor spirit to visit Lotus Tea House, a vegetarian restaurant with an already stellar following. It has a quaint townhouse location and, of all things, a retrofitted Buddhist temple, as anachronistic as that sounds. Why bore you with any other trivialities? What with the urbaneness of wicker chairs and somewhat unaccommodating wooden tables (if you’re a group of four), pacifying classical music, creaky wooden floors, salmon coloured, stucco walls, and botany pictures- I must be heartbroken, because I am being far too harsh in this instance.
What makes the Lotus Tea House matchless in quality is the knowledge it offers the masses; shelves where diners can read books about the Buddha, and even donate any Buddhist teachings themselves if they so choose. Upstairs there’s an empty room with a lone Buddha statue where you can even bow three times, if YOU so choose. And of course, there’s its fait accompli: its originally brewed teas. Pots that run the price of, at most, 4.95. Well worth it, if not for the novelty of having a tea that doesn’t steep dried goods, but boils everything together fresh. So I am told, so I have seen. I’ve never looked in the kitchen though. But, the proof in this case is in the pot, because there are instances of whole oranges, mashed up almonds, even apples left in clear glass pots. Of course, there are dried leaf teas if the heart so chooses. I myself am a staunch disqualifier of tea almost anywhere, my old master teaching my dear brother and I about tea when we were young kung fu adherents (he never believed in drinking cold water, only boiling oolongs), so I like to push my snobbery onto the world. Anyway, the tea certainly is unique, and warrants mindful drinking, the almond tea, for example, will gelatinize if you let it sit long enough.
I was intrigued by the icy cold fruit tea: iced tea I assumed to be rhetorically done up on the menu and underwhelmed by in person. I was wrong. It was the best iced tea I’ve ever had in town. It had pieces of fruit, apples, oranges, pineapple, elevating the Ceylon brew to something ambrosial (yeah, I’ve used the word before; but this time, I mean it). And it wasn’t just put there to humour an aesthetic seeking drinker. The lemon undertone I’d usually expect was replaced by an awesome orange citric sweetness, a syrupy pineapple pungency, mixed so well that the beverage had its own frothy head! Never have I come across anything like it.
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Healthy Soy Bean was the next item to order; boiled soy bean with a dash of sea salt. In my mind I envisioned it as a block of mere tofu smothered in salt, something I hoped for, my Philippine grandmother lovingly feeding it to me for breakfast in my youth. Alas, I was met with a plate of Edamame beans, that dull, popular Japanese appetizer. Nutty, salty, clean. I can’t complain more than that.
My entree was an exciting array of cranberries, cashew nuts, tofu and vegetable stir-fry, paired with a simple soup and bowl of bean sprouts with a simple spicy, savoury sauce. The soup itself was a humble thing. Its broth, a quiet familiar vegetable flavor, with the odd tomato skin floating about, something I have come to know in the culinary world as always out of place.
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I was underwhelmed by my stir-fry. A serving set around a dome of light and aromatically nutty rice, I was disappointed by what I saw in front of me. There was nothing wrong with the portion, there was a substantial amount of food, but I couldn’t hold truck with the lack of cranberries and cashews. I wonder why so many places do this? Highlight dishes with unique ingredient ideas and then give dishes a sparse sprinkling. The combination of sweet cranberries and savoury cashews would have given perfect balance to the already salty and starchy nut sauce that coated the stir-fry. I thought that maybe Lotus Tea House could have been the prodigal son that escaped the banality of Chinese food, but the features of the dish were absolutely overwhelmed with so much traditional flavor. I threw my puritan caution to the wind. I was tired, I was heartbroken, I mashed my rice with my stir-fry, I didn’t care to keep it separate, I turned it to mush, I ate furiously, the waiters couldn’t stop staring. I didn’t care. I blamed it on those one thousand crescent kicks, I blamed it on my broken heart, I was still trying desperately to fill a void. Was it my lost brother I was crying over? Or my food? I didn’t even know anymore.
The Lotus Teahouse
79 Regina St. North
Waterloo, Ont. N2J 3A7
Monday: 11:00 am – 3 pm
Tuesday to Thursday: 11 am – 7 pm
Friday & Saturday 11 am – 8 pm
Sunday Closed
CASH, VISA, OR DEBIT.
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