The tea master is a Filipina

Thanks to the bubble milk tea phenomenon, Filipinos are finally primed and ready for tea. Remember five years ago when Pinoys looked askance at the brew? When “iced tea” at restaurants meant Nestea served over ice? We’ve come a long way, baby.

Now that milk tea has become the latest addiction (I myself need to have it at least once a week. I don’t know what they put in those pearls but I bet it’s related to crack), maybe Pinoys are even ready for tea-infused food.

At least that’s what Renée Sebastian is hoping, and, odds are, she’s right. This lovely Filipina from Brooklyn, New York, is the first Certified Tea Master in the Philippines, and her expertise is on full display at Da.u.de (pronounced “da-you-deh”), the tea lounge she’s soft-opened in Bonifacio Global City.

“I’m hoping that my timing is right,” Sebastian says. “It’s certainly much better than four, five years ago. I think the influx of the Taiwanese bubble tea market has considerably helped to educate Filipinos in tea. They used to drink just iced coffee drinks, but now they’re open to drinking tea. I’m hoping people now will be open to the infusion in food as well.”

BGC has become a hub of exciting, chef-run eateries offering first-rate food experiences from all over the world — “I wanted to marry Le Marais in Paris and also the artsy vibe of West New York City, which is where I’m from,” Sebastian says — but personally, I was reminded of when I had high tea at the Savoy hotel in London. There, in a salon so royally plush you could imagine Kate Middleton right in the middle of it, they served a proper tea with scones, jams and clotted cream. I loved it so much that my attitude towards tea has never been the same — I revere it in the same way I do wine and coffee.

Da.u.de offers a similarly transcendent high tea. You know you’re in a 21st-century tea lounge when you get finger-food-size banh mis instead of sandwiches with the crusts cut off, but don’t miss Renée’s ham and cheese scones with peanut butter jelly, her tea-infused jams like the lemon curd and spicy sili jam, and marvelous marmalade laced with fragrant Moroccan Skala tea and calamansi rinds.

Sebastian collaborated with several renowned local chefs on the food: Buddy Trinidad for her colorful macarons, Jackie Laudico for her pralines and Ramon Antonio for the bulk of the internationalist menu, which includes a Beef Rendang & Pancake breakfast, Roast Pork Pho appetizer, and Basquiase tartine with jamon Serrano, chorizo Pamplona and Manchego cheese.

Afternoon tea: Served from 3 to 6 p.m. every day, high tea includes scones, apple strudel, macarons, and tea-infused jams and marmalades.

I tried the Skala tomato soup, which comes with a shot glass of Skala tea on the side that you pour in and stir. As a sucker for such rituals, I enjoyed the novelty factor of this, as well as the rustic freshness of the soup and its sheer size (two can share).

The Mushroom & Mascarpone pasta is another standout. I’ve never had casarecce pasta outside Italy, and these pinky-length pasta rolls, punctuated by wild mushrooms, are bathed in a lovely sauce that is lemony, cheesy and creamy all at the same time. I was intending to eat a few spoons’ worth and ended up polishing off the entire dish.

But the tea drinks, of course, are the pièce de résistance. There are 55 to 70 different kinds of tea available (including Renée’s specialty blends), as well as tea-infused cocktails like a Mojitea, Margaritea and Marteani. I wasn’t about to get smashed at lunchtime, however, and so went for her Lemon Thirst Quencher instead, a blend of lemongrass tea and pandan jelly so refreshing I downed two tumblers’ full.

A customer ordered a special black tea latte that Renée proceeded to cook up on the stove (note to self: must order that next time), while at breakfast, clients trying to wean themselves from coffee have the coffee-almond macchiato. “We don’t grind the coffee beans, and add just enough to get the aroma, but it’s still black tea,” she notes. “Lots of people are surprised but that’s the idea — starting to expand their minds about tea.”

Da.u.de’s clientele includes not just tea fans but also the growing population of Manila’s health-conscious. “We get the curious people, local businesspeople who stop in and are pleasantly surprised, and a lot of the wellness people,” Sebastian says. “We get people who do yoga, people who seek healthier alternatives to their daily beverages, and have a little fun with it. Most people think of tea as leaves and hot water, but when I present it in a different way — they may spend their money on three, four beers a week — but if they can spend that on something more fun that is mixed with tea, it’s healthier, antioxidant-filled, anti-cancer, and helps your digestive system as well.”

And that’s the beauty of tea as compared to coffee. “With coffee, the caffeine travels directly to your bloodstream, that’s why your heart palpitates right after drinking a lot and you get the jitters,” Renée informs us. “But with tea it’s a bit of a time release; it has to travel through your central nervous system. So it’s also a slower time falloff.”

Since Renée started Da.u.de in New York as a wellness company with teas, fashion and natural beauty products (the restaurant sells some of the company’s leftover black gel hand wash — another item I could get addicted to), she wanted to have a name that was proudly Filipino. She found that the front part of the Philippines’ tribal bahag with markings and geometrical patterns was called “dayude,” “so I dropped the ‘y’ and used that.”

Once a professional singer in New York City, she drank a lot of tea to condition her throat but didn’t have her “aha” moment till she traveled to Morocco. “There, when you sit they don’t give you water; they give you tea. And not just green or black tea, they do stuff to it — they put rosewater and other stuff. And that’s what really kicked off my interest in tea blending.”

She studied under Korean and Chinese tea masters and a champion North American tea blender. “They teach you about different cultures, categories of tea and ceremonies, but no one teaches blending because that’s a trade secret,” Renée reveals. “They only pass it on to their children or grandchildren. I’m lucky — they see something in me, some potential, so they share the knowledge.”

Though Renée uses lemongrass and mangga from the Philippines in her teas, her long-term goal for Da.u.de is to have the first tea plantation here. “Our heavy rainfall is what prevents it, and also the knowledge,” she says. She’s also collaborating with a tea blender in New York on a smoke-able tea to actually wean people off nicotine.

But for now, she’s happy to induct more people into the ranks of happy and healthy tea drinkers (and tea eaters). I’ll drink a Mojitea to that.

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Da.u.de Tea Lounge is on the ground floor of the Net Lima Bldg., 26th St. corner 3rd Ave. in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Call 854-4187, mobile 0922-846-3268, follow them at twitter.com/lovedaude, like facebook.com/daudetea subscribe at youtube.com/lovedaude, or visit http://lovedaude.com.