Our Cafe

Thea is a busy inner city cafe near the centre of Adelaide, South Australia. We are open daytimes Monday to Thursday but also open until 8pm on Fridays. Bookings.

A sample menu is show below, but may change from time to time.

Hours are
Mon - Thurs 11 to 4pm
Friday 11 to 8pm

Our lunchtime trade is very brisk with many officeworker customers only getting a short break - so we try very hard to get the food and drink to the table quickly. Thea's prices are quite reasonable with most main courses around the $10 mark.

Before 12 and after 2 the restaurant takes on quite a different character with people sitting together and "chilling out" over our specialty cold and hot teas and snacks. We tend to attract lots of students form both local and overseas who know that at this time Thea is a nice place to sit and chat and it's not too expensive for tea and some of our simple, delicious snack foods.

Of course there are always people who order a late lunch at that time and just enjoy the nice environment and a mix of gentle music.

There are also those who come to drink quality Taiwanese teas like Green (Li) Tea, Ooolong (Wulong) Tea, Black (Red/Hong) Tea made the traditional way with Mr Chen downstairs (please contact us for details).

Taiwanese Food Style

We serve a small menu of carefully selected dishes that are made in authentic Taiwanese Vegetarian style.

Taiwanese food is perhaps a little lighter than many Chinese Food styles - we try to preserve the flavour of individual ingredients - where sauces are used they tend to be light so as not to drown the individual tastes and smells.

Some say that this is a Japanese influence. Japan had a direct control of Taiwan for 50 years so there have been many exchanges of influence. It is not common to get good sushi and Miso in Taiwan and many types of seaweed can be seen in general Taiwanese cuisine. A couple of our dishes use seaweed, but there are many other delicious choices if it is a bit frightening to you :-)

Since World War 2 Taiwan has opened up significantly to Western food influences including French, Italian and American. Where we have adapted those for our food we still make sure that our food feels authentically Taiwanese to us.

All of our meals are Taiwanese "Pure Vegetarian" which means that there are no products that involve the harming of animals so might include some milk or honey. Some of our dishes are pure Vegan as well - just ask our staff at the counter when ordering and they will help you.

Taiwanese Specialty Hot and Cold Teas

There are now starting to be many good places to get Taiwan Style specialty tea. But our first little shop was one of the first in Australia.

Taiwanese Specialty teas are sometimes called "Mocktails" (Mock cocktails) because they have the style and refreshment of a nice cocktail but without any alcohol. They blend either Black or Green teas with a variety of ingredients and are subtly sweetened.

Often fruit juice is used - our Lemon/Green tea is a favourite made with fresh lemon juice, squeezed by us every morning., or mango, or chocolate or coffee or almond or many other flavours. Even ones that are hard for Western people to imagine like Purple Yam or Lavender.

We source the best and most natural ingredients that we can.

Now in the major cities there are plenty of quite good ones like Qubic in Adelaide or the many "Easy Way" takeaway teashops in Sydney and Melbourne but we feel that ours have a little advantage because our teamakers are very experienced at getting a good balance of flavours and our ingredients are always as pure as possible.

Please download our menu for further information about our food and price. The menu is in PDF format, please open the menu with Adobe Reader version 4.0 or above.
Enjoy your meal.