After work Monday, I dashed downtown to meet up at the Chapters at John & Richmond (although everyone ended up at Starbucks upstairs instead — instructions people). The occasion was that ZMP was leaving to live in England because they had better music than Canada. Actually, when we had our last little gathering, we thought he had already left without saying bye, so since he hadn’t, we got together to catch up and scare him with some advice.


OMG ZMP G2G 2 UK
Originally uploaded by k3v.

After some of the usual debating about where to go, we decided on Montanas. The Montanas at John & Richmond is hella posh, more like a restaurant than an American eatery. The menus and place setting were modern and the ambience was moody, although a little to dark for my tastes. The food was pretty good too surprisingly, I had some awesome gravy on my fries.

After paying our bill (Ohh one hundred and forty-seven, not $147), we made our way out for some BBT. First we tried the Tea Shop 168 across from the Chum building, but as expected, it was a take out place. So then we went up to the one on Dundas, east of Spadina. Along the way, we ran into a movie shoot for a movie opening up at Christmas time called P2. A slasher/thriller where a screamer is trapped in the 2nd underground level of a parking garage. I thought the guy was joking when he said that was the title, but I guess they are running out of ideas.

Anyways, back on our trek, we found out that the Tea Shop 168 we had planned to goto was conspicuously dark. So then we tried the TenRen down the street, which was also unfortunately closed. Hmm. We walked around a bit, trying to find a unshady place that also served BBT, which was unexpectedly difficult in the middle of Chinatown. Go figure. Finally, through some of Rachel’s contacts we found yet another Tea Shop 168, this time with seating and open south of Dundas on the east side of Spadina.

I got a Lychee with Lychee jelly because whenever I go BBT with the elec2005 folks, Rishi says that jelly is so good. Well, it sucked. I’m not sure if it was the way they cut the jelly, but I couldn’t suck the jelly up through the straw! Even pouring my jelly into Pauline’s pomegranate only worked for a little while. So the verdict is no more jelly, and back to tapioca.

Anyways, turns out ZMP isn’t leaving for a bit, maybe we can meet up again before he’s off (John Mayer concert??)