Tea House in NY

Cha-an is a Japanese tea house located in the lower east side of Manhattan. If you know Zen-cha, just think of it as a more traditional version of Zen-cha. I went there with my roommates and friend for lunch. It was small and packed but the interior design made the cafe look like Kyoto, like Akk said. They have a little section of tatami for people to have a real tea ceremony I suppose. I didn't get to see anything going on in there but I saw a guy in kimono, normally considered appropriate for a tea ceremony. A few seats were set up underneath this bamboo made roof. It looked very photogenic. Too bad we didn't sit there. If you are going there for tea, go for it!
Cha-an has a thick menu mostly concentrated on tea. I am not sure how it is like at night but when we were there, they only had about 5 full-meal dishes and other appertisers and desserts to eat.
I decided to order "chagayu" or a A-set meal. It is consisted of one bowl of 5-grains-added rice porridge, 5 toppings, grilled fish, tea of your choice and a dessert. I picked this Uji Fukamushi green tea. It looked fresh green and smelled very good. The taste is light and easy to drink. The rice porridge was quite plain so I ate it with the toppings. One of the topping was seaweed paste. It was less salty and sweet than what I normally eat and I liked it. Fish was good though I still don't know what kind of fish it was, lol. I also tried Takashi's unagi egg bowl, which was quite appertising. It is kinda tricky but they have a rule that says you can refill rice but not rice porridge. I strongly recommend them to let us refill the porridge too, lol. 3 kinds of desserts came to our table. Akk took the green tea ice cream, Naoya took the creme brulee with black sesami ice cream and I got the chocolate roll cake. Green tea ice cream and creme brulee came with fashionably curled sweet black sesami seed crackers. I enjoyed the food but I don't think their food or sweets are that good...