Here in the UK, it's a well-known fact that everyone loves tea. From everyday breakfast tea, to Earl Grey, to herbal, we have it all in our kitchen cupboards. Builder's tea in the morning and chamomile blend at night. We also happen to be a nation of cheese-lovers, with over 700 cheeses being produced here and a cheeky cheese board at the end of a meal (albeit normally at Christmas time) is a perfectly standard procedure. But cheese and tea together? As one? Um, nope. We don't really do that.
Allow us to introduce: cheese tea.
The questionable beverage originates in Asian tea-houses and the trend has managed to reach the US too so naturally, many have started to fear means that it will appear in Britain sometime soon. Apparently, the original Taiwanese recipe used powdered cheese, but it's been adapted over time to use fresh cream cheese for a richer taste.
If you head on over to Instagram you'll find that there's even a tea company in Indonesia so devoted to the drink that they've called themselves... Cheese Tea. It specialises in whipped cheese topped tea, and comes in matcha, oolong, jasmine and black tea varieties. The cheesy topping is said to detract from the tea's bitter taste. Grim.
Due to the tea's strange consistency, we all need some thorough instructions on how to drink it: Cheese Tea recommend firstly tipping the cup at a 45-degree angle to gulp a mouthful of cheese, then use a straw to drink the tea beneath the foamy cheese layer, before stirring the whole mixture together to get the full effect. Want one yet?
A quick search on Insta reveals people posing with different varieties of the tea, and showing off their cream-cheese moustaches (ew). The sad thing is, when it starts to take over Instagram, you kinda know it's a trend, and that probably means you'll be able to pick up your own gross swamp-coloured tea with a frothy layer of gloopy 'cheese' slop in a hipster London café in the very near future. Can't personally see people rushing to meet up with friends over a cheese tea anytime soon, though.
However, _Condé Nast Travele_r reports that the two flavours do actually work together - that the 'salted cheese plays up the tea's floral notes' and the tea 'tastes smooth and creamy'. So maybe, just maybe, it's actually a well-balanced blend of complementary flavours for those with a sophisticated palate? Or perhaps it is what it looks like, and it's a terrible terrible idea.
We'll skip this one out and leave it up to you to decide.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.