| rev:text
| - A really refreshing and great local tea shop that chose the wrong location.
Other people have already harped on it, but I just don't understand why the owner decided to situate probably what is the city's best tea bar in strip mall paradise. It was pretty busy when I went on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of the holiday shopping season. But I'm guessing that during the week, when it could be registering foot-traffic in the hundreds if it was in the Biltmore or central corridor somewhere, it is struggling to make ends meet. Or maybe the college crowd is flocking there? I always stayed right by campus for my tea or coffee in college, so I'm guessing not. I'll stop talking about it.
The selection of the tea is pretty incredible and runs the full gamut of esoteric-tastes-like-dirty-sock varieties of tea to big crowd pleasers like the vanilla earl grey and kiwi melon. They have a very knowledgeable staff that can guide you through the menu and suggest tea drinks and seems well trained in how to make tea.
Although I'm not so sure about some of their methods. (This is where I turn into the picky tea snob, but that's what this store is for, right?) For one thing, when I decided to get a cup while I perused the menu for what bulk tea I wanted I was pretty shocked to find that the smallest cup is 16 oz. That is huge for a tea drinker like me who drinks the literal cup like a proper Englishman.
Next, for hot tea, they put it in a tea bag and steep it in a Styrofoam cup with a lid on it and tell you to let it steep for 3 minutes for my black tea. That seemed really short for a black tea, but I followed their instructions. Sure enough, it was a fairly weak giant cup of tea.
Add to that I had the flavor of the Styrofoam cup to augment my tea. I see that some people got a teapot and a glass cup? I wish that was me. I'll have to do that next time, but it's not really practical if I don't want a full pot. They should really invest in some small personal teapots.
Next, since my tea was weak I decided to throw in some Sugar in the Raw (props to that) and stirred it in with a wooden stirrer. The wooden stirrers must be ultra low grade because they really impacted the taste of the tea adversely. They have to go.
But the major reason for the star off is the bulk tea. The process of putting a bulk tea order of any size takes forever even with a group effort. Someone put in one while I was checking the menu and it took them like 20 minutes, which I had to wait through until I could do mine. Then I had to wait another 15 minutes for mine to be finished which made my quick trip to get some tea an our long. Almost made me miss the tip-off for the Suns game too.
They sell it by the gram, which was a culture shock to me. I asked what the translation was from grams to either ounces or teaspoons which they couldn't help me out with. They suggested 25 or 50 grams at least. I did such and hoped for the best.
And while the teas that I have tried so far have been very good, they aren't quite as good as from adagio.com (which they sell and use some teaware from) where I normally get my tea and are much more expensive. Especially when you factor in that they charge 2.50 if you want the bulk tea in a tin, otherwise it comes in a stapled bag.
As such, the bulk tea from there is only good when you decide to try a tea they have there for a change in pace. They aren't good as a primary supplier for a heavy tea drinker.
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