A Modern Take on Tea

Michelle Cheng Shares Authentic Asian Tea Culture and More at Ceremony

Smoke-like puffs of green powder linger in the air for a moment after Michelle Cheng pops open a fresh tin of ceremonial-grade matcha. “This small tin alone took about an hour for one of our farmers to grind,” she says while looking down at the 20-gram container of finely milled green tea sitting in the palm of her hand.

Standing behind the wooden bar in the tea ceremony room of her Providence café, Ceremony, Michelle then proceeds to methodically transform the powder into a drink. She pre-warms a ceramic bowl with hot water before using a long wooden scoop, called a chashaku, to measure the tea. Next, she sifts it to get rid of any clumps and spoons it into the bowl. She then adds water, whisking the grass-hued mixture briskly with a bamboo tool until the earthy, umami-rich liquid is frothy with micro foam.

“This is what a good bowl of matcha should look like,” she says with a serene smile.

Guests at Ceremony can partake in a 90- minute tea ceremony with matcha or nearly 20 other premium teas that Michelle has sourced directly from farmers in Taiwan, China and Japan. Loose-leaf tea options include various oolongs, black teas including Lapsang Souchong, white teas and Pu Er, a naturally fermented tea from the southwest of China. Each loose-leaf tea is brewed multiple times using traditional methods. Typically, the tea has the most flavor and character on the third or fourth brew, Michelle explains.

“I describe the tea ceremony almost like seeing one’s life in a cup of tea,” she says. “It starts out small and then it peaks before it dies down.”

Tea has been central to Michelle’s life for as long as she can remember. It was part of her everyday routine when she was a child growing up in the Anhui province of China, which is famous for its green teas. She remembers sipping watered-down tea at elementary school recess and drinking it in a ceremonial fashion at her ancestors’ graves during the Qingming festival, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day.

“My grandmother always believed tea was better than water,” she says.

Michelle moved with her family to Rhode Island when she was 11 years old after her father was recruited to work in a lab at Brown University. After college, she began her career working in the textile industry in New York City, but she soon felt a longing to come home and connect back to her roots. She missed the centrality of tea found in Chinese culture and balked as Westerners filled cups of mass-produced tea with heaps of sugar or lots of milk.

“When I started the company, my goal was very simple,” Michelle says. “I wanted to bring a part of what my parents left in China back to their daily routine in America.”

She started planning and researching the idea for her business almost 10 years ago. She spent a few years visiting farms and getting to know producers, followed by several years of importing tea through her former wholesale business, Leafy Green (now integrated into Ceremony). Working out of the Warren-based food incubator Hope & Main, Michelle began selling ethically sourced loose-leaf tea at farmers markets and directly to a handful of local restaurants. She also connected with New Harvest Coffee owner Rik Kleinfeldt, who offered her advice on getting into the beverage industry and a space to sell matcha lattes at his former roastery in the Hope Artiste Village on farmers market days.

As her business steadily gained a following, Michelle started dreaming bigger. She wondered: In our coffee-steeped culture, could a tea bar find success?

At the end of 2019, Michelle opened the original Ceremony in a space on Thayer Street. It debuted with a relatively small menu of mostly cups of freshly brewed tea, as well as matcha lattes. Things started off well, and then everything changed in March 2020 with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Suddenly, Michelle, who was then pregnant with her daughter, Chloe, couldn’t go into the shop for fear she’d be exposed to the virus during a vulnerable time. Stories about anti-Asian sentiment flooded the news. And the social interactions that came with lingering in a small space over a steaming beverage were put on hold indefinitely. Not surprisingly, business dipped.

Looking back, though, she says the difficult time was a blessing in disguise. She’s thankful that she was able to keep the employees who were comfortable working on the payroll to serve customers who were eager to show their support. And the quick shift to takeout-only sales pushed her to become more open-minded about less traditional ways to consume tea. For example, customers ordering through delivery services reported back to her that their iced beverages often arrived watered down because the ice had melted in transit. That provided the impetus for Michelle to create her popular (and super Instagram-friendly) teddy bear add-ins. The shots of matcha, strawberry sauce and espresso frozen into adorable bear shapes not only added potency to drinks as they melted but also evoked smiles during the sad and stressful time.

Last summer Michelle moved Ceremony to a larger space on nearby Brook Street. In contrast to the small and private tea ceremony room that sits at the back of the café, the front part of the space is frequently bustling with customers, including many students from Brown University.

“A lot of students from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong see the pastries and drinks that we offer and they’re, like, ‘Oh my God, this is being back at home,’” Michelle says. “So they just hang out here literally all day.”

With the new location, she loosened her formerly strict take on tea even more. The current menu includes various tea-based drinks, including the café’s best-selling strawberry matcha, a lavender matcha spritz and a Hojicha (roasted green tea) latte that can be customized with a shot of CBD oil, as well as various drinks made with New Harvest coffee and espresso.

Also available: tea cocktails, sake, wine and food, including traditional pastries like taiyaki, red bean dango and mooncakes when they are in season during the Mid- Autumn Festival. In addition, there’s a small grocery area thoughtfully stocked with local and imported items.

Looking back, Michelle says she is proud of the way she’s been able to celebrate and share her culture—in both traditional and nontraditional ways.

“At one point, it physically hurt me to see people covering tea with milk and cream,” she says. “I think it came out of a sense of respect for my farmers. But I was talking to one of them recently and he said, ‘As long as you get our products into people’s hands, we’re happy. Let them enjoy the teas the way they want to enjoy them.’”

Ceremony 406 Brook St., Providence CeremonyPVD.com Open daily

Ceremony
406 Brook St., Providence
CeremonyPVD.com
Open daily