Taiwan Tea Guy

Aliang’s friend has a great place up in the hills and I got to visit them a few weeks ago to help A Liang with a tea lecture he organized. They’ve got a small farm, which means they grow a lot of their own vegetables and stuff, but aren’t really a commercial producer.

In keeping with the tourism growth of the Maokong area, they’ve built (by themselves) some covered seating areas for group meetings and lunches. There’s a small stream running through the property, and hiking paths lead up through the jungle for observing nature and wildlife (which generally means more snakes, as you’ll see in the Nature Calls post).

They aren’t open to the public during regular hours, but are by appointment only, partly because of staffing issues (he manages all the work himself, and his wife cooks all the meals for guests) and partly because they are off the beaten track, up in the eastern hills of Maokong away from the main concentration of restaurants and tea houses. It means they get less business, but they also have the quiet, ‘nature experience’ that Maokong advertises but no longer delivers. It’s a great place to relax, and if there’s good tea to drink, that’s even better!

The food is also very good - authentic ‘home cooking’, Taiwan style! They don’t really have a menu or anything like that; they just cook up what they have, and that’s what you get. I don’t know if A Liang had asked for special treatment for his group, but they did a great job.

The meal was a bit heavy on vegetarian dishes, but Aaron tells me that’s not a bad thing! Everything was very fresh, and the dishes weren’t smothered in MSG and other spices like a lot of restaurants do. I’m hoping to get an excuse to go back soon! 

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm and is filed under My Tea Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.