Day 9 - Earl Grey Tea

Well, this day was sort of a disappointment. I was most excited for the Earl Grey Tea flavor, and I even practiced for it by switching my morning's English Breakfast for Earl Grey. I did research and found out that Earl Grey Tea is basically just black tea with a bit of citrus flavor, usually from bergamot. It was actually often of lower quality than other teas; the citrus was probably combined with the tea to mask the flavor of the below-standard tea leaves. Now it's just another flavor, and in the grocery store it's probably all the same anyway. Only an expert like Jean Luc Picard would know the difference.

So when I got to City Bakery and found out that Earl Grey Tea had been sold out and only Lemon was left, I was intensely disappointed. It's just as well, since I missed Lemon on the first day of the festival, but I'm really sad I didn't get to try Earl Grey. I'm hoping that something else will run out soon and they'll replace it with Earl Grey.

The Lemon Hot Chocolate was pretty odd. I remembered the TONY review calling it overly sweet and cloying, but I thought it seemed more like someone had poured some sort of bathroom cleaner into the mix accidentally. I could barely drink more than half of the shot-sized cup. The Lemon flavor wasn't overpowering, but it definitely did not mesh with the chocolate. It felt like something should be curdling in my mouth. You can even see that it looks kind of suspect from the photo. I don't know why the pic is so yellow, but can you see the bubbles on top? They're rainbow! They're iridescent! It's a bad sign when your hot chocolate looks like bubble-blowing mix.

Coming up: the first of the ambiguously named - Moulin Rouge!