The Pairing Table

The Joy of Cooking

With the launch of our new Pairing Table series at Admari, I found myself returning to something I haven’t made enough space for in recent years, culinary creation.

I’m mean, I am always creating with tea. I am always developing matcha drinks, or tea syrups, blending teas, composing drinks but this is different. The Pairing Table brings me back to the stove, to the scent of herbs on my hands, to my dance in the kitchen when everything is in motion. It’s the joy of building flavor pairings, of imagining how something might taste, and, maybe most of all, of watching someone take that first bite or sip, that instant recognition of joy, like a candle being lit.

It was last week’s Pairing Table that stirred it back to life. There was a moment in service when everything clicked - the timing, the flow, the way each course spoke to the next. Afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about new flavor combinations, new ways to translate story into taste. By this past weekend, that energy found its way into a new drink: a honey-rimmed glass dusted with crushed black sesame crackers, filled with a maple-ginger matcha latte and finished with a soft layer of honey foam. It was divine, but more than that, it reminded me how much I still love this process of culinary invention, guided by tea.

That act of creating for others, not just drinks, but edible expressions - is something I’d been missing. The Pairing Table brought it back in rhythm: tasting, adjusting, plating, watching. Assembling my mise en place , the stillness right before guests arrive, the hum of conversation once they do, the subtle shift in the air when everyone takes that first sip together. It reminded me why I fell in love with hospitality in the first place.

I’ve been cooking since I was young. My mother loved to entertain, and I’d spend afternoons poring over her cookbooks. I’d choose something ambitious, and as long as it was savory, I usually succeeded. Baking required precision; I preferred intuition. To me, food has always been scent, sound, and feel, not measurement.

My father still talks about the first time I made him linguine with white clam sauce. I was probably eleven. The sauce was from scratch, thickened with a little flour, baby’s first roux. I remember the pride of that moment, and his face when he tasted it. I suppose its that same spark I now look for when guests taste something new at Admari.

By fourteen, I was working in restaurants; first washing dishes, then waiting tables, then learning the choreography of service. Over time, I moved through kitchens and dining rooms, from FOH to BOH, eventually creating and managing my own concept. It was thrilling, but relentless. When I opened my first tea shop, I wanted a different rhythm. Something slower, quieter, more intentional.

But the creative impulse never left. I introduced our Not Your Grandmother’s Tea Party at the first Admari Studio and it was my first expression of that, blending what I knew from restaurants with what I was discovering through tea: flavor, timing, ritual, joy.

The Pairing Table is that idea evolved, culinary creation as ceremony, where each bite and sip tell a story of season, and emotion. Tea taught me restraint; hospitality taught me rhythm.

Together, they’ve given me a language of taste and presence.

Stay tuned this week for few recipes from the most recent Pairing Table, and Matcha session!