Host Ken Cohen interviews Debbie Raab, co-owner of Tea for All, exploring the art of pairing teas with chocolates and discovering flavor synergies.
26 Dec 2025
The NYTS Tea Studio, Sharing Gongfu Tea and Community
We're very excited to be at the New York Tea Society's new Tea Studio in midtown Manhattan, chatting with NYTS' founder Roy Lamberty.
Roy was a guest on Talking Tea in 2018 and he's back today to talk with us about how NYTS has evolved since our earlier episode, and how its beautiful new Tea Studio came to be. Roy tells us about his experiences around gongfu tea tables in China, and his vision of building those experiences into a tranquil, communal tea space in New York City. We chat about the studio as a space to have tea on your own or around a communal gongfu table, its aesthetics and design elements, the studio's location in New York's Koreatown, and Roy's very successful work in building community through tea. We also delve into the sourcing of some of NYTS's very unique tea offerings. Roy talks with us about the lineup of events and themed sessions at the tea studio, and the NYTS tea education programming at the studio and through the NYTS online virtual tea group and its programs. We also discuss NYTS' optional membership plans and its online tea market.
NYTS teas and teaware are available for purchase at the tea studio and through its online tea market.
Information about the tea studio, directions, hours and reservations, and the NYTS online offerings are on the NYTS website.
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Talking Tea is produced and hosted by Ken Cohen.
more about Talking Tea
The views and opinions expressed by guests on Talking Tea are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Talking Tea or its staff.
This podcast features music from "Japanese Flowers" (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii/japanese-flowers (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii/japanese-flowers)) by mpgiiiBEATS (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii)) available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Adapted from original.
Episode image of the gongfu tea table at the New York Tea Society Tea Studio, by Roy Lamberty. Adapted from original.
Header image "Raw Puerh mid 1980 Menghai" by Cosmin Dordea, used under a Creative Commons CC By-SA 2.0 license. Adapted from original.
9 May 2024
A Product of the Place: Creating Teaware and Ceramic Art, with Willi Singleton
Willi Singleton is a Pennsylvania potter who's well-known among students and teachers of the Japanese way of tea as a maker of beautiful, lustrous teawares that are joy to use. Today we're sitting down with Willi in his Kempton, Pennsylvania studio, at the base of Hawk Mountain, to explore his creative process and the techniques and philosophy that go into the creation of his unique teaware and other ceramic art.
We chat with Willi about his introduction to clay art and especially Japanese clay art, his time in Japan studying and working with traditional Japanese potters, and his transition back to the US and the beginnings of his Kempton studio. Willi almost exclusively uses local and regional clay and glazes in his work, and we talk about the importance of connecting to the place, the locality, in which a work is made and how that plays out in Willi's process and its results. We discuss the techniques and challenges of working with place-connected materials, the "flavor" and what Willi calls the "veto power" of the clay, Willi's focus on elemental processes and mateirals, and the mystery and unpredictability inherent in the way Willi creates clay art. And we talk about Willi's connection to the tea community, how the community has influenced and continues to influence his teaware, about the communal aspects of art-making, and how each of Willi's pieces are a confluence of potter, place, landscape and community.
Willi Singleton's website is at willisingleton.com
Follow Talking Tea on Instagram at talkingteapodcasts.
Talking Tea is produced and hosted by Ken Cohen.
more about Talking Tea
The views and opinions expressed by guests on Talking Tea are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Talking Tea or its staff.
This podcast features music from “Japanese Flowers” (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii/japanese-flowers (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii/japanese-flowers)) by mpgiiiBEATS (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii)) available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Adapted from original.
Header image “Raw Puerh mid 1980 Menghai” by Cosmin Dordea, used under a Creative Commons CC By-SA 2.0 license. Adapted from original.
Inside a recent episode
Tea and Chocolate
Published 18 May 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] That's fascinating. So that was very fascinating and different. Is it important to have, well, first of all, is it important Before we get that specific, is it important to have, in your mind, single-origin chocolate, single country, maybe not single farm, single-origin chocolate and single-origin tea, meaning from one specific farm? Do you think that makes a difference? I think it makes a difference. I don't know that it's the end-all be-all of tea. and or chocolate. We're going to taste some teas and chocolates that are single origin today and also some that are not specified. Your inventory is very interesting because it spans the gamut, aside from your tisanes and your herbals, In Spanish and Gamut, you introduced us to Nepali tea. […]
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