A classic Huaiyang-style chicken soup with water shield is nicely garnished with a few chrysanthemum petals floating in the bowl. The petals are infused to extract their full flavor and you can taste the characteristic bitter-sweet of the flowers.

Salted tieguanyin (oolong) leaves are served with deep-fried shrimps, and the dish is done better than elsewhere. The shrimps are done to a crisp without losing flavor, and the tea leaves too add to the crunch.

In the wok-fried sliced beef with bitter melon and kuding, the bitter tea nicely matches the bitter vegetable while the three-cup chicken with pu'er is excellent with a bowl of rice. But the strong tastes of the sauces overwhelmed the pu'er and kuding leaves, and you need a really sensitive palate to detect the traces.

Perhaps it is due to the properties of tea, but both these dishes tasted less oily than usual.

However, it was really hard to detect tea in both the poached clams and steamed sea bass - if not for the tea leaves garnishes.

Glutinous rice balls with pu'er tea or green tea for dessert showcased the teas best, although they were a tad too sweet for me.

Jewel Chinese Restaurant sous chef Cai Guangmin says he likes tieguanyin, an oolong tea produced in southern Fujian's Anxi. He says he surfed the Internet to research the properties of various teas before deciding what ingredients worked best in the dishes.

"I think the bold flavors of pu'er will match the strong-tasting three-cup chicken," he says. "On the other hand, the bitter taste of kuding goes well with bitter melon, and can also beat the heat and reduce dryness in summer."

For both dishes, he soaked the tea leaves in hot water, and then pours the infusion into the dish, reducing the sauce before serving.

Cai says tea dishes offer the same benefits as tea drinking, and the teas will reduce the grease in the food, and help the body digest a meal better.

He has experimented with tea in different forms, using leaves, infusion and powder.

Zou Jun, director of operations with Mingjia Yaji, a company dealing with tea, says different teas are suitable for different cooking methods.

"Green tea is suitable for plain frying, and used in light, vegetable dishes. Black tea can be used for roasting, marinating and smoking. Matured pu'er has a dark color and strong taste, and is better used for seasoning in red-braised dishes," he says.