For most people, tea is simply a beverage, but at Natural Tea Manor in New Taipei’s Xizhi District, tea is also a food ingredient, a garnish, and even an enabler of the transformation of this local establishment.
The birth of a restaurant
Natural Tea Manor, just a 10-minute drive from Taipei’s Nangang train station, is an old tea plantation-cum-factory currently run by its fourth-generation owner.
At the entrance we come across the Tian Mama logo — the Ministry of Agriculture’s recognition of innovative food businesses making use of healthy local produce — and an eye-catching sign celebrating the restaurant’s inclusion in the Michelin Guide in 2025.
CEO Tsai Hsu-chih tells us that his family used to send most of their tea to be sold in Taipei City. Unhappy with the discounts demanded by middlemen, his mother started running a tea stall on holidays at the entrance to a nearby hiking trail. As time went by, she built a customer base, some of whom would travel to Xizhi to buy her teas and chat with her. If they stayed late, she would cook up some noodles and vegetables for them to eat.
This set in train the transformation of Natural Tea Manor. Tsai’s mother defined the scope of the new venture by focusing on tea cuisine. After completing his compulsory military service, Tsai obtained professional cookery qualifications and started developing tea-based dishes. The family business thus diversified from tealeaves to tea cuisine.
Culinary innovations
How does one reconcile the delicate aromas of tea with the pungency of Chinese-style cuisine? “This has to do with my dual identity as a tea maker and a cook.” Tapping into his knowledge of the subtle fragrance of tea and the fermentation and roasting processes, Tsai is able to integrate tea with food ingredients effortlessly.
Two kinds of tea are used for the chicken soup on Natural Tea Manor’s menu. The tea cooked with the stock serves to accentuate the rich keynote flavor. When the chicken soup is about to be served, freshly brewed Baozhong (Pouchong)—a lightly oxidized tea—is added to give more texture to the scent. The lemon fish here also features the delicately refreshing aroma of Baozhong, which sets off the savoriness of seafood.
For fried glutinous rice balls (a traditional Taiwanese dessert), Tsai deep-fries rehydrated Oriental Beauty tealeaves. The crispy texture, together with the gentle aroma, keeps customers coming back for more.
Tian Mama and Michelin
In early 2023, Natural Tea Manor joined the Tian Mama accreditation scheme under the Council of Agriculture (now the Ministry of Agriculture). In June, Tsai’s Dongpo pork, cooked with Tieguanyin oolong tea, made it to the final round of a culinary competition held under the aegis of Tian Mama.
The occasion gave Tsai an opportunity to compare notes with Thomas Chien, a renowned Taiwanese chef with a background in French cuisine. They reduced Dongpo pork in guabao steamed buns to the size of finger foods and blended tea powder into the dough used to make the buns. “We stewed the Dongpo pork using Tieguanyin-style tealeaves with a mellow aroma.”
The conversation with Chien “opened up new vistas for me at the intersection of agriculture and culinary arts,” Tsai says shyly, but beaming with contentment. After a series of trials and upgrades, Natural Tea Manor was included in the Michelin Guide in 2025.
Pushing the boundaries
Showing us Natural Tea Manor’s 6,000-square-meter plantation, Tsai says that the tea plants here are Jin Xuan. Known for its creamy flavor, this robust cultivar is especially suitable for organic farming. Tsai allows his plants to grow tall, handpicking the tender buds to produce premium tea, while the leaves lower down the branches are harvested by machine and made into commercial tea powder.
From powdered tea, a diverse range of tea-flavored delicacies have come into being, including new year’s cakes, fortune cakes, ice cream, steamed buns, peanut cakes, nougat biscuits, soymilk, popcorn, and even pineapple cakes. Visitors to Natural Tea Manor are spoiled for choice. “Actually, commercial-grade tea is where we really push the boundaries,” Tsai says with a smile.
At Natural Tea Manor, we see the many faces of tea and trace its fragrant presence in a cup, on a dish, or in gift sets. For Tsai, this diversity comes from a single source: the tea plantation that carries memories of four generations of his family.
