Afternoon Tea at the Seasons Lounge at Four Seasons - Chicago, IL

My friend Yeena took me out for afternoon tea for my birthday a few months ago.  How can you not love little sandwiches and plates of scrumptious desserts?  

Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream - New York, NY

So what does Soomeenshee do after eating a huge meal at Lure Fishbar?  Go eat ice cream of course! Yes, her stomach knows no bounds.  It so happened to be parked in SoHo and we were going to walk around and burn some extra calories, but I got sidetracked by the Van Leeuwen ice cream truck.

Beautiful Tea Museum - Seoul (Insadong)

While we were looking at some old silverware from street vendors, Jung and I literally stumbled upon the Areumdaun Cha Bangmulgwan (Beautiful Tea Museum). According to the sign below, it's a museum, gallery, tea shop and cafe all in one. Sounded intriguing enough so we went in.

The museum is in a renovated hanok, an old, traditional Korean house.

The museum exhibits and sells over 200 different varieties of teas from Korea, China, Japan, Sri Lanka, India and Europe. They have a wide range of green, black, brown, herbal and flower teas. This is the tea shop, where you can buy different types of tea as well as tea sets. I loved this floating candle decoration in the center.

Visitors can enjoy sitting in the central garden, where they can view the rest of the albeit tiny museum while drinking some tea.

Here's the front cover of the menu. According to the front cover, they've been around since 1998. Why have I not known about this place till now???

We got the Teastory Greentea Waffle, a crispy green tea flavored waffle, topped with bananas, whipped cream, blueberry jam and two scoops of ice cream, to share. This waffle single-handedly redeemed Korean waffles for me. I could eat this for breakfast, lunch and dinner any day of the week.

We shared the Chinese Pu-erh tea, which is an after-fermented tea.

Now why I love this place so much is because each table has an electric kettle so that you can boil water for yourself. I always feel so bad asking for more hot water so having your own supply of hot water is sooo convenient.

They gave us a little plate with two green tea rice cakes with some honey, just like they did at O'Sulloc Tea House.

This is my new favorite snack now. Nothing beats the yumminess that is crispy, hot rice cake with honey. They broiled the green tea rick cake till it was crispy on the outside and soft and chewy in the inside.

The Beautiful Tea Museum also exhibits porcelain artwork by young ceramists as well.

How come none of my pieces looked like this in my pottery class?

Here's how to get here: From Exit 6 of Anguk Station (Subway Line No. 3), walk about 40 meters to Insadong-daero (between Crown Bakery and GS 25 Convenience Store). Proceed about 400 meters, and turn right at the Golden Jewelry Store.

Beautiful Tea Museum

#193-1 Insadong Chonglo-gu

Seoul, Korea

(02)735-6678

www.tmuseum.co.kr

O'Sulloc Tea House - Seoul, Korea (Myeongdong)

We took a short reprieve from the cold weather and stopped by O'Sulloc Teahouse when we were in Myeongdong. They specialize in green tea and create really yummy drinks and desserts. Apparently they harvest the green tea from the company's tea plantation on Jeju Island or Jejudo. They sell the tea at various department stores and have several other tea houses in the city.

It was crowded when we got there and had to wait for an open table. They asked us if we wouldn't mind sitting in their small tea room. We didn't even know they had a private tea room, but we were more than happy to have a small room all to ourselves. We sat around a beautiful wooden table, which literally looked like a slice from a tree trunk.

I have to mention that Koreans are amazing when it comes to tidiniess and creating order out of chaos. Once we found out we could sit in the tea room, all of us kind of dashed inside throwing our shoes amuck, but after I sat down and looked outside, which was literally less than 30 seconds later, I saw this. I didn't even see anyone behind us, but someone just tidied up our shoes and disappeared.

We ordered two individual sized cakes and a green tea to share. I can’t recall the tea we had but they bring out a teapot, a tea cup and a large bowl. He explained that once you pour in the hot water into the teapot with the tea leaves, you then pour it out into the large bowl so that the green tea doesn’t get too bitter. Then you pour it into the individual cups to drink. It also came with a small plate of two rice cakes that were floating on a pool of dark honey. Aren’t the teapot and dishes so pretty?

The honey was dark and syrupy. Delicious with the chewy rice cakes.

We got the green tea cheesecake tiramisu and the green tea cake. I think everyone liked the green cake the best. I can't recall which is which. Sorry! I think this was the green tea cake with a big dollop of green tea caramel on top. Not only was it aesthetically pleasing but quite tasty as well. We gobbled this up so fast, I don't even remember what was inside.

I think this was the green tea cheesecake tiramisu. The cheesecake tiramisu was very light and airy, not the texture we were expecting from a cheesecake. It didn't quite taste like a cheesecake or a tiramisu, for that matter. I think it would have been better had it gravitated more towards being one or the other, but not a fusion of all three.

Their green tea ice cream and their shaved ice are supposed to be really good too, but it was too cold for that this time around. I will definitely make a pit stop next time I'm in Seoul during the summer.