Gourmet Teas At Pillar House

The next time you have a dinner with us consider trying one of the loose teas selected by Upton Tea Imports, a purveyor of the World's Finest Teas. These specialty teas are served individually in elegant cast iron pots lined with enamel to assure optimum extract and flavor. You may ask: "What is so special about loose teas? Why not just stay with the old-proven tea bag?" Read the following excerpt from a letter by Henry Patterson of Upton Tea Imports and you will understand.

Henry writes ... Recently I found myself explaining to a caller why we don't carry the brand of tea bags he was seeking. "We don't sell branded products like that. You see, we import leaf teas from all over the world, in wooden chests, and we sell the tea in little chests (tins, actually), to individuals, by mail."
He paused. "This is a business?" "The god Convenience has ascended in America, but not, I am pleased to report, in every household." He ignored me. "Who's your customer?" "People who trouble to read the book instead of waiting for the movie to come out, people who garden, people who try to fix things when they break. Some of them" I added in a confidential tone, "actually put shoetrees in their shoes." "Well, good luck to you." He rang off, convinced we'd be out of business before spring. I didn't tell him our Lentil anniversary is approaching, or that our biggest challenge is buying enough top flight second flush Darjeeling in a wet weather year like 1999.

Later that same day I arrived at the Pillar House for our initial planning session. As I traversed a prep kitchen on the way to Tom's office, I stopped to admire twin stock pots a cannibal would covet, full to the brim with simmering veal stock. "You make all your own stocks from scratch?" I asked a cook.
"Of course. You know where you're going?"
"I'm in the right place." I answered. .

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