Hot Spot

STRANGE BREW Somehow the sultry-voiced Korean equivalent of lounge music doesn't seem out of place among the wooden tables and rice paper lanterns of the Golden Scales Teashop. After all, its interior design is a study in eclecticism. A Chinese landscape painting shares a wall with an aging beer ad. A stuffed fish capers among vines of plastic grapes. The proprietress, gliding soundlessly over the warped wooden floor, serves me a refreshing bowl of o-mi (five-flavor) teasweet, sour, bitter, pungent, salty. Not unlike lemonade, I decide, as I drain the curious concoction of tea, tangerine slices, pine nuts, jubjubes and chunks...