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Jade Leaves Tea House
3110 Guadalupe St.
Austin, TX
512-687-0569
visit website
Hours
Mon - Fri: 7:00am to 6:00pm
Sat: 10:00am to 6:00pm
#41
of 137
in TX
Map of Jade Leaves Tea House
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Jade leaves teahouse is incredible!
The aesthetics are unbelievable - like walking in to a little piece of China right in the middle of Austin. The food was delicious and I found it inspiring that there are still restaurants where people care about the food they are preparing and serving. Everything we had was organic and homemade, and though it was a bit pricier than the average lunch spot, I don't mind paying a bit extra for a high quality meal. The staff is very helpful- if you're like me and don't know a lot about green tea, or tea in general (but thoroughly enjoy it), they will give detailed information as well as make recommendations.
What impressed me the most, however, was their dinner menu.
The dishes I experienced had tremendous depth of flavor with great textures and interesting combinations. Also, the food is very clean. I felt fabulous eating it.
Their dinner menu changes weekly, and is updated weekly on their website.
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- Nikki 04/08/08
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I had tea at this tea room and thought it was so delicious. The food, service and hospitality was wonderful. I will definately return and bring my friends. FYI I think that Jim, who reviewed this tea room just wanted to let the whole world know that he thought he was a somebody and knew tea better than everyone else. WE had a great time regardless!!
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- Tracy 04/08/08
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What P.F Chang’s is to authentic Chinese food, Jade Leaves is to authentic Chinese Tea.
Walking through their immense collection of Chinese scholar stones (largest I have seen in Austin) and the wonderful decorative features in the building I truly expected something wonderful. What I discovered, however, was absolute tea mediocrity.
I am an oolong and puerh tea drinker, and though the tea selection was large, oolongs and puerhs are the portion of the menu that I am most competent to comment upon.
All of the oolongs were from fall of 2006—one year ago. Not only was 2006 a poor year for Taiwanese oolongs, but the fall harvest produces oolongs of the lowest quality. Further, most of the lightly oxidized oolongs only have a shelf-life of 3-6 months depending o... (more)n how they are stored. I asked to look at the Li Shan (they called in “Pear Mountain”) and it had gone off—no doubt because of the age and the way it was being stored.
Many of the oolongs and all of the puerhs are best prepared in a style called “gong fu cha”. Overpriced tables, used for gong fu cha, could be found throughout the teahouse-- however the tea is served in steeping baskets. This is completely incorrect as the time required to steep these teas is measured in seconds and would be bitter by the time the pot or cup made it to the diner’s table. Of course this is assuming that the teas were good to begin with.
Despite the abundance of gong fu tea tables, none of these are ever used. This underlines the fact that Jade Leaves is all artifice and no substance.
Someone visiting from Taiwan or China might not recognize the names of the teas. One tea was called “Orchid Oolong”. No such tea exists. Perhaps it is a Baozhong with an orchid-like aroma, but this is universally called Baozhong oolong. Li Shan oolong was called “Pear Mountain” which is a literal translation, yet this is odd since other names were not translated. Another confusing name was “Green Guanyin”. There is no such tea as a “Green Guanyin”, but there is a Tieguanyin produced in Anxi , China that is green. The names seemed to have been pulled out of a hat.
Again, the naming was odd for the puerhs also. While it is common practice for domestic tea vendors to not describe the cake in enough detail that you can tell what batch it came from. However, it is common to describe puerh with some consistency, beginning with the two major puerh types “Shou” and “Sheng”. This is the same as dividing wines into Red and Whites. The ripe puerh was correctly called a “Shou Puerh”, however the sheng puerh was called an “Aged Puerh”. I have no idea why they didn’t call them Shou/Sheng Puerhs or even Ripe/Aged Puerh. This may seem trivial, but it is the exact equivalent of going into a restaurant and asking for a wine vintage and then told that they only serve an “Aged Red” and “Blanc” wine.
The clerk was very nice and was willing to answer questions, but to her admission didn’t actually know a lot about tea.
I settled on a ripe puerh since this is cheap and hard to mess-up. I left feeling that another great opportunity had been lost to bring a true Chinese/Taiwanese tea experience to the community. All the artifacts and scholar stones in the world won’t make bad tea taste any better.
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- Jim T 11/18/07
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at least four pages of tea selections. I had Yerba Mate and it was delicious. The food menu is relatively small, but every morsel is mouthwatering. The stir fried rice with tofu was outstanding. Very fresh vegetables and organic meats available. Top notch! Dining area has several more public tables and then several booths that are almost small rooms for privacy. Beautiful dark wood dividers. The back room is an art gallery of fine jade and other Chinese artifacts.
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- Erika Mittag 08/24/07
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