Cha Fahn's tasty dinners satisfy to a tea

You know the old saw: "Coffee is prose, tea is poetry." Or, "Coffee is fuel, tea is tonic."

In other words, tea is the nice girl, the overlooked blonde who always loses out to the racy brunette with the bad attitude. Blame it on British nannies or Celestial Seasonings, but you have to be a real lover to find anything sexy about tea.

Anyway, it's just after 8 p.m., and we're almost alone at Jamaica Plain's Cha Fahn, an eight-seat tearoom that recently expanded from tea, sandwiches, and desserts into tea-based dinner entrees served with beer, wine, and sake.

Chih-Wei Hung, tea master and owner, sounds a little frustrated when we mention later how slowly dinner has caught on. "People don't know about it," he says with a sigh. "They ask, are you a tearoom or a restaurant?"

We don't mind the quiet, even if the only remotely risque thing about this serene spot is the low lighting and new age music. Now, if someone could bring us pillows for the deep wood chairs that swallow up each member of our group of five, we would settle in until springtime. We gaze with longing at a platform with cushions and seating for two; this is the place for a tete-a-tete, not a party.

The adorable waitress brings the tea menu, a list of 40 kinds that spans familiar oolongs, Chinese and Japanese green teas, and the antioxidant-packed, somewhat faddish white tea. There are teas with peach, mango, and cherry flavors, bergamot, and the popular genmai, which is blended with toasted rice.

Two of us settle on a brew of roots called a tisane that arrives in a glass pot; the ginger aroma is mind-expanding. One Saucier's Lapsang souchong is poured first into an aroma cup and then a tasting cup, as the waitress explains the process of steeping and pouring and not allowing tea to overbrew and become astringent. Our sense of well-being inflates.

We haven't seen a tea-based list of entrees since Tea Tray in the Sky closed in 2003, taking a litchi-smoked duck breast, a pork chop with Ceylon-infused currants, and an Earl Grey brownie with it. Cha Fahn easily boasts as many standouts, including tea-bathed chicken, stir-fried and coated in a Lapsang souchong glaze. "It's chicken, but it's interesting," one of us says.

Jasmine-wilted kale with lemon has a good, bitter bite; tofu cutlets in a creamy peanut, ginger, and coriander sauce are so good we want a spoon instead of chopsticks; roasted cod and red peppers, served on thick Italian bread, blow us away with a sake taste. Only the Vietnamese summer rolls are disappointingly bland.

It's hard to think of a better time to nose-dive into a cup of tea, and the longer we sit here, the harder it is to think, period. We breathe in the warmth and aromas and begin to turn into big noodles of be-ing when it's time to order dessert.

The bergamot flavor of an Earl Grey Royal rice pudding is worth a trek in knee-deep snow. Three thick gingersnaps are chewy and packed with ginger.

In Chinese, "tearoom" is synonymous with "finding serenity in the chaos," the menu declares. Cha Fahn is a few doors down from JP's busy, blaring Dunkin' Donuts -- a reminder that Boston is first and foremost a coffee town. A few more doors down is a pub with bad pizza and a loud jukebox.

Serenity is getting seriously underrated.

Cha Fahn: a tea room, 763 Centre St., Jamaica Plain, 617-983-3575.