Cha Fahn began as a tea restaurant that sold tea and snacks, and has grown into a little island of serenity good for dinner and wine and side sales of tea, tea-based cosmetics, and New Age Japanese CDs. The food is light, but the chef has both some of the Japanese visual sense and some good ideas for using tea as a flavoring agent in cooking. The only problem we encountered was that after the tea-flavored entrées, tea-flavored desserts, and a pot of tea with dinner, the caffeine kept us awake!

The centerpiece is still the tea, and while the types aren’t up to what I remember from Tea Tray in the Sky, some are very good and nicely served. For example, if you spring for the pot of "Oriental Beauty White-Tipped Oolong" ($6), you’ll be brought no fewer than four vessels. The tiny clay pot brews the tea. Then it’s poured into a porcelain pitcher, lest it brew too long and become overly astringent. Then the server pours a little into a tall but narrow cup, and from there into a flattish bowl, like a sake cup. The first is the "aroma cup," and it holds the bouquet of the tea for a minute or so, while you get a good sniff. The latter is the sipping cup, which provides an ideal view of the color. Both are on a small wooden platform. If you finish your tea, the server will offer to infuse more water into the pot. This "second cupping" is a typical technique in Asia, especially with lighter teas such as oolongs and greens, where the loss of tannins makes the later cups quite nice.

After all that, "Oriental Beauty" isn’t the greatest oolong I’ve ever tasted, but it’s very good, with toasty and fruity notes in the aroma cup, and a full flavor in the sipping cup. The second infusion has almost as much aroma and a cleaner flavor. It is, of course, too delicate a tea for most foods, although it has some affinities with the cheese platter ($10). This has thin slices of something like manchego (a mild, aged sheep cheese), something like a mild cheddar, and a wedge of unripe Camembert. The fruits are golden-delicious apple, better than usual in small slices, and kiwi, unripe and tart but sweetened with syrup or mirin (Japanese rice wine) to good effect, along with some water crackers. It’s not the most amazing cheese plate in town, but a very nice one, and scaled for the minimalist effects of the teahouse food and drink.

By day, Cha Fahn serves "tea sandwiches" and no fewer than 12 desserts, from chocolate-mousse cake ($5) to mochi-wrapped ice creams ($4). But at night there are appetizers and entrées, and, with a recent wine license, a glass of sangria. The real plan is to offer a variety of sakes.

Cold cucumber-and-dill soup ($6) is a large oval bowl of liquid with a clear flavor of cucumbers, just extended slightly by the dill. A special on black-bean soup ($6) used Lapsang Souchong tea for a strong, smoky flavor, almost like barbecue sauce. Jasmine kale ($6) is a kind of undercooked salad, served cold, with the slight note of jasmine from jasmine tea, but much of the flavor from a sweet-sour soy dressing and a scattering of pine nuts. This is appetizing and virtuous, too.

Vietnamese summer rolls ($6) bring two, with a fine spicy Thai-style peanut sauce. The Vietnamese part is that these are rolled in moistened rice skins and stuffed with noodles, shredded vegetables, and a few shrimp. Ours were not rolled as tightly as they could have been, and were therefore less translucently inviting, but the flavors were fine.

My favorite entrée was tea-bathed chicken ($16), really a stir-fry of tender chicken breast with a bit of glaze. The tea again is Lapsang Souchong, and the effect again is smoky, sweet, and sour like barbecue. The vegetable is baby-spinach leaves, stir-fried just a time or two to keep their color. There’s a small cone of rice, of which I do not entirely approve. The rice is long-grain jasmine, but made a little gummy, Japanese-style, so you can eat it with chopsticks. However, while Japanese short-grain rice is more aromatic when made this way, the effect on long-grain jasmine is not so favorable. If you break up the rice into the gravy, it becomes very difficult to eat with the pointy, Japanese-style chopsticks provided. Thai jasmine rice is great stuff, but it needs a cooking technique that holds the aroma better.

You might as well get a spoon with Indonesian satay tofu ($14), because this dish depends on a creamy peanut sauce so good you’ll want to spoon up the rest with the rice. The tofu comes in squares you can almost handle with the chopsticks, and makes a superb vegan entrée. Garlic-lime shrimp ($17) is a fine helping of shrimp presented simply in a light sauce that also leans on ginger and some fresh cilantro.

The only entrée I didn’t love immediately was the "Red Sea cod" ($18), which is a fresh, sweet piece of fish, but with an oversalted sauce of chopped red bell pepper, over slices of Italian bread. The fusion of bruschetta and scrod makes sense, but the high salt level made it hard to eat.

While patrons wait for the sake list, the sangria ($6) is a very interesting product, using rooibos tea for a wonderful color, while the flavor of that tisane also enhances the main messages of orange juice and red wine. It’s not a large glass of sangria, but again the Japanese minimalism of much of the food makes it all the more flavorful for being savored.

The teas are still the beverages of choice, and they’re served in individual pots with bags of loose tea. Organic Yunnan ($4) was a strong pot of one of my favorite black teas. "The Fire" ($4) offered a blend of spicy roots that was less spicy (a little ginseng, mostly) and more earth-toned than I expected, but warming and noncaffeinated (and even better with a little honey). "Serene tea" ($4) leaned mostly on chamomile.

Evening desserts add a couple of tea-infused specialties to the afternoon list. Earl Grey royal rice pudding ($5) was very enjoyable, and I don’t usually like the flavor of Earl Grey tea. In a rice pudding, however, it has an effect like the cardamom of Indian rice pudding. Baked pear and green-tea ice cream in a glaze of cherry sencha — a flavored green tea from Japan — ($6) is based on an under-ripe (the better to hold shape) Bosc pear poached in red wine, or red tea. It’s then sweetened with that tea-infused glaze and served with rich green-tea ice cream. You also can order the daylight delights, of which the chocolate-mousse cake is small but elegant — really just a mild chocolate mousse sandwiched in just enough chocolate cake to hold the butter-cream frosting, and a bit of fruit sauce. Mochi ice cream is very sweet ice cream (green tea or red bean) wrapped in even sweeter pounded rice.

Cha Fahn is a unique design, conveying an Asian identity that isn’t country-specific, and yet isn’t diluted by the feeling of fusion. It’s dark and quiet, oddly more of each because of the blond-wood floor. The chairs have backs more than six feet tall, also somehow lowering our eyes. Table settings are on embroidered mats, and there is one tatami table for those with loose knee joints. The service is helpful and in tune with the atmosphere.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.