Green tea espresso?!

I am so not L.A. But there we were last week, seeing some shows and visiting friends — and escaping Chicago’s first round of wintry slush. The city of angels isn’t exactly known for tea (not as much as the bay to the north, anyway), and this unfortunately wasn’t a tea excursion for me. To my everlasting dismay, our arrival was scheduled a few days after the close of the “Art of Tea” exhibit at UCLA’s Fowler Museum.

Nonetheless, I did enjoy some playful tea creations at Urth Caffe near our suite in West Hollywood. Allegedly a celeb-spotting site, alas we saw no stars. But I loved a pumpkin chai my beloved ordered me one morning — I keep expecting to loathe the pumpkin flavor with the tea, and I keep loving it — and I found the perfect respite the next afternoon as twilight came on with a cup of “green tea espresso.” While not quite the “revelation” I’d heard about — it’s just thickly brewed and steamed matcha tea — it’s a great way to offer crossover appeal. And, frankly, few places that actually use matcha powder use it very well. Urth’s “espresso” was well mixed and had a light froth that was both unusual and appreciated. It also came with two nibbly matcha-sesame cookies.

Finally, given this week’s music-embed debacle in the wake of the Myspace takeover of Imeem (gee, thanks for the warning before you up and destroyed all our Imeem links and playlists, Myspace jackasses), let’s close with a song from (appropriately?) the Lala service, the only song that for me adequately sums up my L.A. experiences …

L.A. - The Fall