On Traditional Mooncakes and Where to Find Some
A conversation (and education) with Elena Liao of Té Company.
Last year at around this time, my friend Elena Liao, the Taiwanese co-owner of Té Company, a tea shop in Greenwich Village was concerned—maybe a little frustrated, too. The Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as the Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival) was a few weeks away and local bakeries were promoting special mooncakes they created for the occasion. Elena, a tea expert, and her husband, chef Fred Ribeiro were busy readying their own offerings for the holiday. But unlike those of their counterparts, their mooncakes were not modernized with unexpected combinations of filling; theirs looked plain by comparison, shaped simply into small unadorned rounds. Although anomalous in NYC, Té’s are modeled after traditional mooncakes.
Elena’s worry was that people here didn’t know anything about mooncakes except for the kind being sold everywhere else, which only represents one of many types of mooncakes found throughout East and Southeast Asia. We both wished someone would publish an article that gave readers without prior knowledge of or connection to the festival some context for the celebration and the mooncakes associated with it.
This year, we decided to do something about it ourselves. Meanwhile, Elena’s busier than ever; she and Fred are about to open a second outpost of Té, this one in the East Village. I’m not sure how she found the time to do this, but I’m grateful and I think the rest of you will be as well.
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