On a Saturday night, wrapping up dinner at Emeril’s, Jason Burse’s eyes lit up when I asked for hot tea to finish the meal. “I’ve got just the thing,” he said.
Out came two glass tea pots on warmers lit with tea lights, accompanied by the most beautiful bone china tea cups and saucers, wrapped in painted florals and gold trim. The first pour was a vintage Emperor’s private reserve pu-erh tea infused with truffle and gold, and the second a Gyokoro green tea. Burse, the captain at Emeril’s, enthusiastically spoke of age on the pu-erh, a fermented Chinese tea, asking me to smell the cup. It was scented with deep notes of cedar, nuts, and truffle.
Emeril’s, the lauded restaurant by namesake chef Emeril Lagasse in New Orleans, isn’t done surprising its diners. The restaurant has introduced a new tea service, meticulously paired with its tasting menu, or served a la carte at the bar. And it’s not just any old sweet tea. These are treasures Burse and wine director Aaron Benjamin have sourced from Rare Tea Cellar, a purveyor of fine teas and other specialty ingredients.
“My first experience with tea was in Chicago in 2017, while I was working at Band of Bohemia. It was a 1979 pu-erh,” Burse says of the time he knew tea was a special calling. “The tea was gifted to me by a mentor of mine who wanted me to stay focused during service, and I was hooked after that.”
Emeril’s chef and co-owner, E.J. Lagasse, is on board. “We’re having a lot of fun with it,” says Lagasse, who had his first specialty tea tasting at three-Michelin-starred SingleThread Farm Restaurant in California. “It was phenomenal,” he recalls. Lagasse is recreating some of what he experienced, working with individual courses and matching their taste profiles with equally heavy-hitter teas. “Hojicha tastes like nori, it’s got a seaweed thing going on, so we tried it with the trout. We’ve got the Fulsome for the oyster stew with fennel pollen in the tea.”
With the beef course, the team is serving warm beef tallow in the tea, much like a consomme. With fish and caviar, the teas are chilled; for another course a genmaicha tea is cold-steeped for 48 hours and served at room temperature, and a lobster mushroom tea is served hot. “The mouthfeel of it is incredible,” says Lagasse. Cold teas are served in wine glasses to help collect aromas, and hot ones are served in fine china of different shapes.
“Hojicha tastes like nori, it’s got a seaweed thing going on, so we tried it with the trout.”
— E.J. Lagasse, chef and co-owner, Emeril’s
“Thinking that wine is the only avenue for pairing and luxury should really be a thought of the past,” says Benjamin, who directs a weighty wine list. Both Burse and Benjamin are working with Lagasse to pair the teas with the different courses. The pairing can be purchased as a $100 add-on to the tasting menu ($225) or ordered by the cup for $8 to $20. “We also make our own iced tea,” says Benjamin.
The food at Emeril’s has a linear focus on local ingredients — the boudin, seafood, takes on po’ boys and sno-balls, are all quintessential New Orleans. When it comes to tea, Lagasse hopes to steep some NOLA into that, too. The tea blends are worked like cocktails, with different steep times and even fat-washed with tallow. Lagasse says the team is working on a tea that tastes like a Sazerac.
“Will we find the chicory of the tea world?” asks Lagasse. “We’ll find more sense of place in tea.”
As for now, I’d tuck into a warm cup at the end of a meal here. To finish, banana cream pie is served with an aged 2010 pu-erh called Caramel Dream. It’s a dainty thing, with depth and honey, a gentle lullaby to pie. And how can you say no to that?
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