V Rating: Super V
Where: 90 Rivington Street, Lower East Side, New York.
When: Sun - Thurs: 10am-11pm, Fri - Sat: 10am - 1am.
Tel: (212) 475-9190
Price: Breakfast: US$3.50-$6. Sandwiches: US$3-$8. Meals: US$6 - $10. Afternoon tea: US$22 for one. US $38 for two. Cash only accepted.

A celebrity owner is usually a bad reason to eat at a restaurant. Particularly when their celebrity is unrelated to making food. That’s why I didn’t plan to visit Teany, a vegetarian cafe co-owned by Moby, while we were in New York.

However, on our first day we were fooled by the tag-line that New York is the city that never sleeps. Really, it’s the city that sleeps in.

Many shops and attractions don’t open until 10am - 11.30am. This includes, Moo Shoes, a shop stocking non-leather shoes and cruelty free products which I’d insisted we visit so I could replace my hole ridden shoes ahead of the predicted Valentine’s Day Ice Storm.

My shoe spree was brought to a screeching halt when we turned up more than an hour early for the 11am opening time. To kill time, we mooched idly around the Lower East Side, peering in the windows of closed vintage clothing stores, stopping off to share a fresh bagel and steaming pumpkin soup at Sugar, a lovely bakery on the corner of Allen and Houston St, and having a tourist frisson when we walked past Katz’s Deli (the oldest Deli in New York, and the one where Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in When Harry Met Sally).

It was after further mooching our way around the block that we stumbled upon the inconspicuous Teany. Celebrity owner or not, it was -10 degrees outside so we rapidly made our way in.

Teany is teeny. Although it’s is slightly below street level, it’s interior is light, bright, clean and crisp with just a few intimate but well-spaced tables

As the name suggests, Teany’s second (and better founded) claim to fame is it’s selection of teas - 98 varieties to be exact. The range is formidable and requires its own menu. The tea also doubles as decoration, with the room lined with prettily decorated rows of tea cans (and occasional Teeny merchandise). It was a lovely, warm environment to sip tea and read the newspaper.

Andy tried a teanychino, a blend of roasted mate, almond bits, vanilla bean, cornflower blossoms, and sunflower petals, steeped in milk. I had a chai latte. Mine was pleasant, but not strongly flavoured, and I envied Andy’s more exotic choice which was spicy and sweet.

We weren’t too hungry after our stop at Sugar, but still shared a “simple salad” with greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, sprouts, organic chick peas and palm hearts, with lemon and herb dressing. I enjoyed it. Everything was very fresh, and the dressing had a lovely flavour and set off the other ingredients well.

The chick peas and palm heart (very similar texture to marinated artichokes) made the salad interesting, steering it well away from the run-of-the-mill green garden variety. I’m not sure if palm hearts are readily available in Australia, but they were quite common in the US. I was keen to use them in salads here, except I’ve since heard that extracting them from the palm kills the tree.

Most of the Teany menu is vegan, but they’ve deliberately included some vegetarian dishes as well. The meals include all-day breakfast to light salads, sandwiches and snacks, and they also do a ‘high tea’ special.

I wouldn’t rush across town purely to visit Teany if you only have a couple of days in New York. However, if you’re shopping in the Lower East Side (and it is great shopping) Teany makes for a cosy and refreshing pit stop.

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