Thunder Tea Rice

There is this Hakka stall at Amoy Street Food Centre that sells “Lei Cha Fan” or loosely translated into English as Thunder Tea Rice.

Apparently this name came about because Hakkas would grind the herbs and vegetables in olden times to make the tea and in doing so, the tools used made alot of noises. Hence the dish name. Sounds like a nice name, ya? Do not be taken in by a beautiful dish name!

Well, I tried it sometime this week and was bemused by the foreign and weird taste of the “tea soup” which is a murky lime green. Lei Cha Fan is very healthy and comes with many types of vegetables, including ground peanuts and of course, a bowl of tea which consists of tea leaves, mint, basil, ginger, Chinese parsley, etc.

At first I was put off by the greenish colour of the tea or soup or whatever but I heard from a friend that it is pretty delicious so I decided to throw caution to the wind and try it. Well, to my horrors of horrors, the tea soup was too minty for my taste. I only took one sip and left the big bowl of tea soup untouched. The rice and vegetables was average and tasted very very very healthy.

I took a look around the food centre and found many people eating this “Lei Cha Fan” and happily slurping the lime greenish tea soup and FINISHING the soup completely. Yucks. Is it really that nice?

Maybe an acquired taste is necessary but I think it’s not for me, no matter how healthy it is. Sad to say, my lunch was kind of ruined but “never try, never know”.

http://www.sbestfood.com/thundertearice.htm