| rev:text
| - There sure are a lot of tea places showing up nowadays, especially since the monstrous success of David's Tea. Say what you will about that corporate beast, but in my opinion, David's Tea has had a firm hand in pushing tea into the hands of mainstream Toronto. So, in a market on its way to becoming pretty heavily saturated, what's Tea Blendz doing to differentiate themselves? Plenty...
First off, it's not a corporate beast. It's a little boutique shop owned by Khadija, an incredibly nice person whose passion for all things tea-related is almost contagious. That feeling of non-corporateness runs throughout the experience at Tea Blendz. Khadija is easily approachable, encourages you to ask questions, and is obviously passionate about the stuff she's selling. Not to say that the staff at those corporate places aren't passionate, but at Tea Blendz, it just seemed more honest.
They also have a pretty kick-ass teaspresso machine--one of the only ones in Toronto right now I'm told. Basically, it allows them to quick-press loose-leaf tea rather then steep it. That means you can get it faster and cleaner, and the whole process is under more control of the brewer rather than being at the mercy of the boiling water. Your tea will still take a few minutes, but those few minutes can easily be spent talking to the warm and pleasant staff. In fact, I ended up staying and chatting about tea and the neighbourhood for far longer than those few minutes that my tea was pressed.
Using the teaspresso machine, Tea Blendz also brews up some pretty amazing tea lattes. Khadija claimed they were the best in the city, and I can't say I'd disagree with her. While I'm self-admittedly not a tea or tea latte expert by any means, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I could definitely see myself going out of my way to enjoy another one.
Khadija works with local tea blenders to come up with a lot of her blends. They have plenty of classic flavours, like Earl Grey, English Breakfast, and Bourbon Street Vanilla, and some of that are hers and the blenders creation, like Chocolate Mint Delight, Root Beer Rooibos, and Sweet Pumpkin Spice. Despite being pressed and not steeped, the subtle flavours that the tea descriptions promised were still prevalent. I also picked up on a slight sweetness, which amazingly highlighted the even subtler flavours in the tea. All-in-all, I'd sort of equate it to wine-tasting; after tasting it, discussing the tea and its flavours seemed almost natural.
Khadija mentioned that there's a growing trend in food and tea pairing. Because of that, I wondered if she planned on offering any food at some point, which right now she doesn't. I don't mean sitting down and eating a club sandwich and fries, but a small, one-bite of something that was specifically made just to be paired with a particular tea would certainly have been interesting. But Tea Blendz just opened a month ago, so things aren't yet set in stone.
All-in-all, I had a great chat with Khadija. I learned some stuff, and I even left with a few bags of tea. I brought home a bag of Chocolate Mint Delight and the Sweet Pumpkin Spice, and at 5 bucks for 50 grams, I left feeling pretty good about buying it.
So if you're in the neighbourhood, this honest-to-goodness, non-corporate boutique shop is definitely worth checking out and supporting. Even if you're not in the neighbourhood, it's worth the drive if you want to learn more about tea and if you appreciate truly nice customer service.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)