Nine tables, and walls of tea
Le Thé has been on the Rue des Bains since 1994: one small arcade with nine tables for two, and shelves running the length of the walls, stacked with boxes of tea, teapots and cups. The welcome, the room and the plates all say the same thing, and that is why the place feels like somewhere else entirely.
You order on a post-it
The menu is enormous and numbered. You write the numbers on a post-it and hand it over, which reads as a gimmick until you realise it is simply how it is done — and it spares you mispronouncing a few dishes.
What we ate
We had the pork buns — brioches au porc laqué — the small buns filled with caramelised beef, spicy crab salad, grilled pork dumplings and the spring onion pancakes, and loved all of them. Dim sum here comes in every shape and method the form allows: round, square, money-bag, rolled, steamed or fried, filled with beef, chicken, prawn, fish or vegetables.
The tea, which is the name
The list is long enough to keep a connoisseur busy: perfumed, green, black, red and oolong, imported directly from China and sold by the box to take home. We had the house tea with lemon and honey, and it is the one we would order again. Lunch or dinner, every day except Sunday.
