Čajovna V Síti

I will let you into a little secret – I don’t always enjoy my visits to Czech tea-houses. I love the teas – nowhere else in Europe seems to offer such a wide range at such reasonable prices – and I appreciate the fact that the cajovny offer me refuge when I have given up coffee for Lent. But I don’t always enjoy the atmosphere: the skulking teenagers sucking on hookah pipes as if their lives depended on it, the sometimes shabby furniture, the dog-eared menus. I know that Czech teenagers and students constitute some of the cajovny’s most regular customers and perhaps they like their teahouses this way. But I am pushing thirty, and to be honest, I sometimes like my cups of tea to be a little more civilised.

Enter Čajovna V Síti (Teahouse on the Net). I wasn’t sold by the exterior – from the street it looks like a shop that sells printer toner or whiteboards or something equally mundane. But after walking in and taking my first breath of the grown-up (read: expensive-smelling) clovey aroma, and noticing the calm cream walls, the posh-not-tatty wicker furniture and wide screen Apple computers (I’m sure I wasn’t dreaming), I had completely changed my tune. Čajovna V Síti is a teahouse for grownups.

The menu (not dog-eared) is as big as a book. The Czech version offers page-long descriptions of some of the teas – of which there are well over 100. The English version is less detailed, but is a useful guide if you’re struggling. It’s a long menu including some less common teas from Korea, for example, and several I had never heard of before – including Hanahakoucha Seirei Gokuchani, which is an eye-watering 340 CZK a pot. Most were a more reasonable 120-160 CZK, and include a thermos of hot water to allow multiple infusions. Most teas are also available to buy loose for home use. However, on my first visit a number of teas had sold out, and there were no white teas available at all, which was disappointing.