Closest we have is Tea Fortress along Kandy-Colombo highway and as great as it is with their novel tea shakes, history snippets and all, it’s not really a tea-house.  Of course most of our high-end hotels have their versions of high teas, which history proves is actually the low tea. Since I made this point, I must digress quickly to explain myself to avoid any confusion or misunderstandings.

When teawas introduced to Britain, they had only two main meals. Anna – Duchess of Bedford felt peck-ish between this yawing gap and started to invite friends around five-ish for tea and delicate finger food. This became immensely popular as ‘low tea’ since this was served during the lower part of the afternoon. It is this that our hotels are serving as high tea. However, the proper high tea is a much more substantial fare of the blue-collar man, who also imitating the upper-crust, took to tea at this time but with a solid meal of roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas and tea. This became known as the ‘high tea’ because this was the ‘high’ meal of the ordinary man.

Coming back, our hotels serve their version of ‘high tea’, but I honestly can’t say if it’s popular. For instance, Cinnamon Grand has a lovely tea buffet, arranged most tastefully. I’ve tried it and loved every morsel of it, but it never really took hold of me. Of course, their coffees are a different story altogether and whenever I get a coffee craving, the Cinnamon Grand’s Coffee Stop is the one and only place for me and I’m not a lone fanatic here. Friends always say, ‘hey, let’s go to Coffee Stop for a coffee’, but never, ‘let’s go for Cinnamon Grand for their tea buffet’. The only ‘high tea’ that is really a success is the ColomboHilton’s ‘Tittle-Tattle’, but they make it so scintillating and have somehow made it the popular venue for the in-crowd ladies of Colombo’s high society. Then again, no one has asked me for a ColomboHilton’s cup of coffee either, simply because their coffees are no match for the Coffee Stop’s.

Even Koluu (a famous chef in Sri Lanka, who is also a very colorful character), in his fantastic column in Montage magazine once made this very same comment that we don’t have a nice place where we’re just comfortable to sit, read, relax and enjoy a good cup of tea. I’m not talking about sipping tea at a hotel lobby, but a nice, cozy nook that has the real teaambience. I hear that in Malaysia these tea-houses are very, very popular and quite ritualistic. I’ve never experienced this, but it’s definitely on my life’s list of things to do.

This Malaysian tea-houses, has tugged my curiosity. Tea, originated from China was not only a beverage, but also formed into rituals of meditation and ceremonies of etiquette.Tea, for the Chinese was of such esteem, that even their immediate neighbor, Japan, got a taste of it a good 1,000 years later! Of course, the two countries never really got on well, but China always had very good relations with Sri Lanka. Chinese historiographies mention numerous cultural, political, religious visits between the two countries. Yet, tea was introduced to Sri Lanka by the wily British.

This makes me wonder if tea is the only thing the Chinese kept from us. We automatically assume that the porcelain exhibits in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa museums must be from the Chinese. But is it?

My apologies, I’ve digressed again…

I asked Mr. Anselm Perera, Managing Director of Mlesna (Ceylon) Limited why we don’t have tea-houses. In my personal opinion, Mr. Perera, after Mr. Merrill J Fernando (founder of Dilmah Teas) who single handedly put Ceylon Teas back on the market and out of the cheap muck that was passed off as Ceylon Teas, had contributed a lot to our teas by providing not only a variety of Mlesna tea types and flavors, but also to the tea culture with their various tea utensils. Mr. Perera, agreeing the need for our own brand of tea-houses, also pointed out that we haven’t marketed our teas to its maximum potential. We export this fabulous product to other countries and they have created an entire experience out of it, while we allow our market to languish to the point that high-end value-added products like tea-houses are infeasible.

As our newscasters say, allow me: “Over to you, Sri Lanka Tea Board!”