Radiance Tea House & Books
Last night I stumbled upon a lovely little place in my neighborhood: Radiance Tea House and Books. I am in a great book club that gets together to discuss once a month. In addition to choosing the book, the assigned person also chooses a meeting spot. We have eaten Ethiopian after reading Cutting for Stone, an Ethiopian story, and last night we went to Radiance Tea House & Books to discuss The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.
Radiance Tea House & Books is on 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. It is up a flight of stairs, which might be why I have never noticed it before. Because it was upstairs, it seemed much calmer than the bustling of midtown outside. After walking in I felt my breath calm. The tables are big and on a Sunday night they seemed happy to let you sit and read or work on a laptop, although the waiter told me that when it was more crowded I would be asked to sit elsewhere if I didn’t order food. The staff was extremely friendly and they chatted with a man working on his laptop in a back corner.
The menu was full of about a hundred different kinds of tea drinks, both hot and iced. The food menu was Asian themed and seemed to change seasonally, but I ordered some delicious pork and veggie dumplings. To drink I got a mint rendevous which was mint tea with Italian espresso and milk over ice. It was wonderful.
I didn’t get a chance to browse the books since we were busy discussing our selection, from afar it seemed like their were Asian cookbooks and of course, lots of books about tea. I am looking forward to visiting this spot again. It would be great after a morning wandered the Museum of Modern Art since it is so close and so reasonably priced.
