Qingtian Tea House — Restaurant in Da'an District

We really wanted to like this place, but we were pretty disappointed by our experience here. Firstly, we showed up when it was supposed to be open at 10am and were turned away, told to come back in 30-60 minutes for them to finish getting ready. We clarify if 30 is okay, they say yes, so we return after about 30 minutes.

When we come back 30 minutes later, there's already another group seated and all other tables are empty. They seat us at a table in the back room and ask us if we've been there before. We tell them that we have not, it's our first time, and the host immediately points us to the most expensive tea on the menu, saying if it's our first time this is what he'd recommend. We ask some clarifying questions since we want to try local tea and he says if we prefer oolong, he'd go with this other one.. (surprise surprise) the next most expensive tea on the menu, a competition grade Oriental Beauty. By principle this feels wrong, especially when he doesn't know anything about us yet.. but we're tea people so we're interested. He then tells us that we are limited by 90 minutes and asks us what we want. We say we'd like a minute to discuss and he promptly forgets about us, coming back after 10 minutes.. We tell him we'll go with his second recommendation since we want to try local tea, and once again we're abandoned for 15 minutes. After a while, I even went to the kitchen to check to see if we were supposed to get something ourselves and they assured us that they would be coming shortly. By the time we get our tea served to us (after a mini ceremony with highly performative flourish, and where he strangely served himself as well..) he left us with "I'll bring you more water and you now have 40 minutes left" - after which of course he predictively didn't bring additional water for another 10 minutes. The whole thing was mind boggling and left a really bad taste in our mouths. When you consider what you could pay at other institutions in Taiwan and otherwise, it just ended up being both extremely expensive (compared to local equivalents) and an overall bad experience. Sure, the setting of an old heritage style house is nice. The tea is fine, I'd be less annoyed paying way over market value if the service was half decent. But this was just ridiculous and I...

I am Asian, not Taiwanese. I speak a little bit of Chinese but far from fluent. The server asked me if it was my first time there. I said yes and he recommended that I order the most expensive tea on the menu. It was raw (uncooked) pu-erh from Yunnan, China. To my knowledge Taiwan is not a place known for drinking pu-erh. I said I was interested in Taiwanese tea and he recommended the second most expensive tea on the menu, which was competition grade oolong. The server stood in front of me for a little while as if he wanted me to make a decision right away instead of looking at the menu further and considering my decision. I felt the store was trying to take advantage of foreign tourists and so I walked out.

It was interesting that despite being the most expensive tea the only information on the menu was that it was raw (uncooked) pu-erh from Yunnan. That was it. It would be like seeing a wine menu in a restaurant and the most expensive wine was described as red wine from France, no year, no winery, no other information. I supposed one could ask the server about what kind of pu-erh it was, but I just didn't like the way this place did its business.

Perhaps if you know more about tea and can ask detailed questions or perhaps if you go with a local then the place might be a great experience. But if your knowledge of tea is low to moderate and if you are a foreigner then this is your warning.

On the other hand, if you are rich and don't mind being overcharged and you just want a nice "authentic" tea experience in a nice setting with attentive servers then maybe this...

My wife and I came here for tea during a particularly wet and gloomy autumn day in October. We were leaving Taipei later that night and had wanted to finish off doing all the things on our agenda with tea-tasting being one of them. We were so glad we came to Qing Tian Teahouse - the atmosphere was so calm and peaceful, we felt like we were sheltered from the outside world. The staff were extremely courteous, well-mannered, and most importantly knowledgeable about tea. Initially we weren't able to get in and had to wait for 30 minutes to get a table but the staff made every effort to ensure we got a table sooner rather than later. We were sat in a quiet corner of the teahouse (I'm so glad we were because it got real busy not long after us). Our server helped us through the menu of teas and gave advice on which tea to choose. We chose a pine-needle pu-er tea and a dessert of soymilk and black sesame pudding. Once chosen, the server came back with a whole set of tea-making instruments and demonstrated the whole process of how to make that particular tea. She also explained step by step what she was doing and why. It was very Zen-like. She drank the first cup of tea with us while we sat discussing the benefits of different teas. Afterwards the server left us to take our time finishing the 15 rounds of pu-er tea! :) I was extremely glad we were able to do the tasting; my wife and I learnt so much. I always knew there was an art to making tea, but the whole experience left me in awe and...