A sumptuous three-course afternoon tea at Glassbelly Tea Lab, a fine-dining restaurant in Hong Kong, has just begun.
But neither the abalone nor the A4 Wagyu ribeye are the stars of the show.
It’s the eight glasses of tea that lure patrons to this dark, wood-paneled space in the city’s busy Causeway Bay neighborhood.
On the left, three shot glasses contain three different varieties of hot tea: plum-scented raw Puerh tea, Gold Needle Dian Hong (a relatively new black tea from Yunnan) and a peat-scented Rougui — a type of oolong rock tea from the Wuyi Mountains in China’s Fujian Province.
On the right, we have ice drip Full Blossom Rougui tea, served in five Riedel glasses.
“Please have a sniff,” says the server. “With the cognac glass, you can get more of the fruit smell. With the Burgundy glass, you pick up more floral flavors…“