Happy Hour at Hillbilly Tea

Drop yourself somewhere between the downtown arena and the downtown White Castle, and you'll end up at Hillbilly Tea: a disarmingly charming spot for food, tea, and for a little while now, booze.








Via their website, I discovered they had a happy hour.  The site says only "tea and hooch - happy hour - wed thru sun - 4pm-6pm!"  With that scant description, we were left to trundle on down there to see about the offerings. 

I settled on a tea-infused vodka flight to start.  With help from our server, I chose my three:

• Smoked, 
• The Good Earth, and 
• Big Earl's. 

      I hardly need to describe to you what smoked tea vodka tastes like.  It tastes, you know, like smoke.  Smoke that gets you drunk.  Smoked tea vodka was definitely worth a try, but it wasn't something I truly savored. 

The Big Earl's was a nice, easy drinking infusion.  It obviously resembled Earl Grey tea in its flavor profile.  The aroma was flowery and the taste mild.

The Good Earth, quite simply, must have been what the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream mixed their cocktails with.  (The vodka may have gone to my head a bit by the time I had this revelation.  You'll have to just go with me.)  To the nose, it was slightly minty, and it tasted like nectar in vodka form.

Speaking of going to my head: let's get some snacks.



We tried the white bean and sage fritters and the corn fried tofu; both were delicious.  The fritters were creamy and chewy, perfectly round fried balls of richness.  Reminiscent of hush puppies.  The tofu was a completely different texture: firm on the inside, slightly crisp on the outside.  The BBQ sauce that came with the tofu was divinely sweet and smoky.

A couple of cocktail offerings tickled my fancy, but with my fancy tickled enough already by the vodka flight, saving them for our next visit seemed appropriate.  The Big Early (Big Earl's vodka, soda and lemony syrup) sounded tailor-made to sip on one's front porch.  The Old Rose (bourbon and house made tea bitters, muddled with orange and a moonshine cherry) had me picturing myself draped in a shawl, winding a Victrola and tugging on the drink in my etched glass tumbler.

Hillbilly Tea serves up consistently great and creative food in a casually funky atmosphere.  The service is always friendly and chill, but very competent.  Their Happy Hour is yet another reason to stop in.