https://www.samovartea.com/
(Unfortunately, this web-site is rather useless when trying to look at their food menu items.)
Place: Samovar®[1]
Location: 1910 Fillmore Street
(between Wilmot Street [which is really just a two block alley] and Bush Street)
Hours: open at 7:00am Sunday - Saturday
Meal: Egg Jar ~ sous-vide[2] egg, smoked salmon (which I skipped of course), brown rice, sauerkraut, sesame oil, and tamari; Cinnamon Almond Butter (Toast); and, to drink (it is a tea shop, after all), a large cuppa Tumeric Golden Milk
(Here is a little-known Cliff Clavin-fact:
Lady Ella's actual birth-name was "Samantha O'Var".
Not many people know this. You can now share this information with your friends and completely amaze them [if they are the gullible type]. You can tell them it is true because you read it on the Intro-Net. They can even verify it themselves with those Scopes-people.)
Last weekend while strolling along Fillmore Street in the afternoon, I came across a new tea shop there: Samovar®. Apparently this location has been open since late Fall 2017 or such. They have two other (older) tearooms in the city and another one at the International Terminal of San Francisco Airport. I have never been to any of the other shops, but when I saw their (even though it was rather limited) food menu, I figured this would be a nice place to check out.
Their signage at the front door actually states "Samovar® Tea & Chai"[3]; however, if you ask me, that wording is a superfluous redundancy, in my opinion. The word "chai" is almost universally the word used for "tea" in many other languages already. However, when most 'mericans think of "chai", they automatically think of a spiced Indian tea drink that is more like a "Tea-Latte".
This location on Fillmore Street does not offer a lot of seating/eating area inside. I had to make do with a bench and kinda shelf/table-thing to eat at. I suppose most people just order tea drinks and either lounge wherever possible or take them to go.
They have their own ceramic mugs/cups made for them locally and are for sale as gifts. If someone had taken a picture of the meal, you would have been able to see the nice design for this particular shop.
When I had stopped in last Sunday, I pretty much had made up my mind what I was going to order today. They do have a few other interesting ideas that I will try to stop back and test out one of these days:
Sweet Singapore (Toast) ~ condensed coconut milk, sous-vide egg (if I had not already ordered a dish with a sous-vide egg in it, this was going to be my second choice; it sounded just disgusting enough that I know I will love it);
White Truffle & Egg (Toast) ~ sous-vide egg, white truffle oil, salt, pepper (another one that sounded too disgusting [read: interesting] not to give it a try]);
Chia Chai Pudding (In A Jar) ~ chia-chai pudding (I asked; they soak the chia seeds in a cold chai mixture/liquid overnight to get them to gel), raw almonds, coconut, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, blueberries, bee pollen, honey;
or
Warm Greens (In A Jar) ~ steamed greens, olive oil, tamari, lemon juice, nutritional yeast.
(Ooops! It looks like someone had the camera set to "Video" and did not get any photos of the actual breakfastary meal. [In my defense, the "Video" setting is right after the "Close Up" setting on the dial and I must have overshot it unknowingly. Plus, I could not seem to get the videos to open properly or I probably woulda inserted one here.])
This came served in an actual Ball® Mason jar (which I was told after I had already bused my table-space and placed it in their plastic tub to be washed/cleaned that you can keep it if you like; oh, well, next time... ). If you have never had a sous-vide egg before, its consistency is somewhere between a soft boiled egg and a poached egg. This made it easy to incorporate the cooked egg into the rice and other ingredients. As strange as it all sounds ~ sauerkraut, poached (sous-vide-d, whatever) egg, and brown rice ~ it all seemed to work very nicely with me.
The toast was good, too, but nothing really special. It was a thick slice of Texas-style toast with a thick layer/slathering of cinnamony almond butter on it.
Now the real winner for me with this whole meal was the drink. It was made with some kinda tumeric tea base ( I can only assume it was their Tumeric Spice, which is made with tumeric, ginger, lemongrass) and milk (which they have in large heated pots at the counter all ready to serve out). It really has to be tasted to best describe it. (Well, I tasted it, of course, but you would need to do so yourd*mnself to really get what I mean.)
Additionally, I was not quite sure how all the flavours of tumeric, cinnamon, almond butter, and tamari might work together, but they also all did work out as a quite nice flavour complement.
I did not bring any of my own condimentary supplements with me this morning because I was pretty sure that I would not be needing any with the choices I had (pre-)made.
Now what were the odds of finding a good tearoom in the midst of Japantown?!
Glen Bacon Scale Rating:
Egg Jar ~ 6.6;
Cinnamon Almond Butter (Toast) ~ 6.3;
Tumeric Golden Milk ~ 6.9
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1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, номер один:
The Rooskoe word "самовар" ("samovar") means "self-brewer". It is the combined form of two Rooskie words "само" (transliterated as "samo"; meaning "self"/"itself") and "варить" (transliterated as "varit'"; meaning "to cook/boil").
I explained this most interesting factoid to the two guys working behind the counter this morning. They did not seem very impressed, though.
2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, numéro deux:
"Sous-vide" is a new(-ish) fancy cooking term which means "under vacuum" in French.
3. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, номер три:
The Rooskoe word for "tea" is "чай" (transliterated as "chai" or "chaj").
