To celebrate the Chinese New Year (14-16 February) we went on a mission to find the best place to drink tea in China town (London). Whilst partaking in some Chinese New Year festivities along the way, and although much less subdued than a the New Year spent in Beijing in 2005 London still managed to get a great feel with the Chinese street parade. Being lovers of tea and having spent some time discovering tea houses on China, we had hoped that we could find similar in China town, but were largely disappointed to find there is no ‘traditional’ styled tea house. But what we found instead was a number of Chinese inspired ‘tea’ restaurants. Probably our favourite was, Yauatcha (15-17 Broadwick Street Soho). Alan Yau’s gorgeous all-day teahouse and dim sum restaurant serves 150 varieties of tea as well as 24 varieties of dim sum and a range of delicious pastries. Trendy (in Soho) but nice! Maybe not like the Chinese New Year I had imagined but then again China has been changing so fast that in one way, it epitomises all that modern China is about.
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