Where: Old Fourth Ward, Atlanta, GA Style: Loft home kitchen Tea Selection: 5 loose leaf teas by ZenTea Teatimes: Select Tea Dates Reservations: Required, pre-paid Contact: 404-401-9655 or via email Cost: $65 High Tea (includes chai-making demonstration) Destination Tea Tips: The best way to learn when The Third Space will be offering another high tea is to request to be added to their newsletter. Come early to find free parking on the street, or pay to park in the Studioplex lot.
Destination Tea Notes: At The Third Space, we try not to act too starstruck when Asha Gomez comes to our table to prepare our tea for us. Asha is a big deal, and we know this firsthand, because we’ve been blown away by her cooking before, at her former Westside restaurant, critically-acclaimed Cardamom Hill. Asha is not just an amazing chef featured in national media outlets from Food Network to the New York Times. She’s also a cookbook author, contributing writer, global food advocate, online cooking show teacher, and we learn, a mom like us, who loves going to afternoon tea with her son whenever they travel.
Asha has just begun offering a “high tea” as a special event, which is priced at the high end of Atlanta’s tea services because it includes a chai-making demonstration after a very generous meal. Born in Kerala, India, Asha intentionally invites us all to celebrate Indian cuisine, this time familiarizing us with her favorite chai preparation. We note that while teas grown on Indian estates are very often served at afternoon tea around the U.S., Asha is the first hostess we’ve had who incorporates traditional Indian flavors into each course of her delicious menu. In fact, we find that her mint-cilantro chutney cucumber sandwiches are a masterful improvement on the original.
Asha designed The Third Space to feel like a home kitchen.
Community-style seating at elongated dinner tables
We’ll be gathering round this long counter to see what’s cooking here after the meal.
Feels like a modern loft, with sleek lines and neutral color scheme
Brightly lit by front wall of window panes
Soft green serving dishes and tulip bouquets make a picturesque tablescape.
Tea Service
Harkening back to her days running an Ayurvedic spa, Asha offers an Ayurvedic tea blend amongst four other choices from a local tea purveyor — Chamblee’s ZenTea
We each have our own glass teapot with infuser insert. I go with White Georgia Peach.
Asha measures out each guest’s chosen tea and pours hot water for steeping.
Loving this mélange of color! Once teas are steeped, leaves await a second steeping in pretty blue bowls.
Savories and Sweets
The entire meal is plated and waiting for us upon arrival, and there is nothing dainty about it!
If you can believe, we are actually offered seconds of these full-size savories, though we admit if we could just fit in one or two more of Asha’s cucumber sandwiches, we would! Savories include tomato pie, tandoori chicken sandwich, mint-cilantro chutney and cucumber on pillowy white (possibly the best cucumber sandwich we’ll ever have), and Indian sloppy joe.
Berries with local honey and mango cream with fresh mango
Cardamom cream madeleines melt in your mouth.
Love this sea foam glass cake plate. A great way to preserve your portioned desserts while you serve the first courses of afternoon tea.
Asha explains that we’ll want to save the tea rusk (similar to an Italian biscotti cookie) for dipping in our warm chai. We are kept happy exploring the other desserts: cashew paste with silver, boondi ladoo (an Indian sweet made for special occasions), wedding cookie with pistachios and cashews, and a light pear cake.
Chai-Making Demonstration
First of all, “chai” means “tea,” so show how international you are by not calling it the redundant “chai tea.” We appreciate that Asha is at home with her guests, and happy to share her knowledge.
Asha prepares her go-to chai for us, a simple recipe using black Assam tea, whole milk, sugar and cardamom. We learn that the black tea is the finishing ingredient, added at the end for four to five minutes, after the mixture has gently steeped “low and slow” to get maximum flavor from the spice.
Asha uses a mortar and pestle to fresh grind her cardamom, loving the aromas released. She rightly observes, “half the joy of tea is the scent.”
“My chai is ready when my entire home smells of cardamom.”
And now, tea-rusk-dipping time. Our fragrant, creamy chai is well balanced by this crisp cookie.
We finish off the meal by passing around traditional candy-coated fennel seeds that aid in digestion and freshen the breath.
