We are in the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland downtown this past week, taking one of my uncles to see the local Chinese members celebrating the year of the pig. We were there in the late afternoon, mainly to see the International Lion Dance. After the lion dance, we walked around this small but beautiful garden that is located in Old Town Chinatown, which is the official Chinatown of the Northwest section of Portland.

The Tao of Tea is int he middle of Lan Su Chinese Garden inside the Tower of Cosmic. You do have to buy ticket to the garden to go inside the tea-house. This is a very calm and peaceful place to enjoy hot traditional Chinese tea and snacks. With two levels of sitting area, this has a plenty of space to accommodate enough guests. I loved their heavily wooden interior decorated with tons of teapots and cups.

We ordered both spicy and roasted peanuts and two plates of vegetable dumplings for snacks.  For our tea, we had golden monkey (black tea), Eight Treasure (mixed of different herbs), and bamboo leaf tea. The teas were served individually in tiny teapots and cups with some rock sugars. The presentation was beautiful and the tea tasted perfect.

This is a unique place to enjoy hot beverage and will ask you at least to try this place once if you are inside the garden. If you don’t have time to sit-in for tea, buy some of their signature flavored teas and enjoy them at home.