Tea

Canadian Tea-tailer DAVIDsTEA Opens First San Francisco Shop

DAVIDsTEA opened its first San Francisco shop on August 25. The Canadian tea-tailer launched in 2008 and now has 78 locations across Canada, where it has helped to popularize the idea of loose tea, and it's now making serious inroads in the Bay Area. Eater SF reports that a Noe Valley (3870 24th St. ... More >>

S.F., You Have Some Damn Fine Arnold Palmers

Every six months I resolve to kick my Diet Coke habit and develop a short-lived enthusiasm for a caffeinated mid-afternoon alternative. You name it, I've tried it: kombucha, yerba mate, iced tea, BibiCaffe, cold-brewed coffee, on and on. Eventually I always drift back to the real thing. This time i ... More >>

SFoodie's 50 Favorites: Red Blossom's Aged Oolong Teas

Number 37: Red Blossom Tea Company's Aged Oolongs

​SFoodie's countdown of our favorite 50 things to eat and drink, 2012 edition ​The Bay Area's coffee roasters may get scads of national press, but our tea merchants, too, have become a force in their own realm of connoisseurship. Among them are Red Blossom Tea Company's Peter and Alice Leong, ... More >>

Tea Lover and Thai Idea Open, Stow Lake's New Café, and John Campbell's Bakery Back to One

The past 24 hours in gossip, innuendo, and cold hard facts about the San Francisco food scene. Over the weekend we spotted Tea Lover (544 Clement at Seventh Ave.), a new boba spot in the Inner Richmond. We weren't surprised the place had a line Sunday afternoon -- the city loves bubble tea. It was ... More >>

Local Diners, Local Gin, & Clay Pot Rice: This Week in Food Bloggery

Jeremy Brooks/SF Weekly Flickr pool​ Highlights from SFoodie this week: 1. Joe Eskenazi, whose love for diners surpasses all of ours at SFoodie, writes a great guide to the five best diners in town -- one of which, he points out, is actually a hofbrau but feels like a diner. Also, we're reminded ... More >>

House Kombucha: Mild and Pure Enough For Doubters

​Even intestinal parasites, perhaps an occupational hazard, can't stop SFoodie. When you're killing everything inside you with antibiotics, rather than the cocktails you normally employ, that leads you, when mobile enough, to the kombucha section of your grocer's beverage case. Why? If you're a ... More >>

Naivetea's Lawrence Lai Talks Taiwanese Oolongs and Kettle Whistle

NaiveteaNaivetea's owners, Lawrence Lai and Ann Lee.​The Bay Area is steadily, quietly becoming a nexus for premium Chinese and Taiwanese tea in America. The owners of Teance, Far Leaves, Imperial Tea Court, and Aroma Tea Shop all travel to Asia to tour plantations and buy directly from farmers an ... More >>

South Sea Seafood Village: Special Tea, Good Siu Mai

Photos by W. Blake Gray​Most dim sum houses have a selection of tea, but don't usually advertise it. Somebody says, "Tea?" You say yes, and you get a pot of watery oolong made from the cheapest tea bags available. South Sea Seafood Village has a small sideline in selling imported teas, includ ... More >>

Dear Honest Tea: Is This Honest Enough for You?

Tejava is significantly better than Honest Tea​Coca-Cola brought dozens of bottles of its sweetened tea brand, Honest Tea, to downtown San Francisco yesterday, left them sitting out in Justin Herman Plaza, and expected us to pay $1 for them. Amazingly, 93% of us did! San Franciscans are just ... More >>

A Spot of Tea at First Kettle Whistle

A Spot of Tea at the First Kettle Whistle

Jesse HirschPeach oolong iced tea and a first course, including bánh mì financiers.​Tell Tale Preserve Company and Naivetea launched their monthly tea event this weekend at the Burritt Room, and if you haven't attended many tea services, it may take a bit for the East-meets-West conceit to s ... More >>

Bob Marley's New Beverage Wants To Mellow You Out

Get mellow?​ Everyday stresses got you slurping caffeine like a crazed fiend? Workaday lifestyle keep you so amped up that you can never relax? Do you just need a little something extra to mellow you out at the end of the day? No, we haven't switched to writing ad copy. We're just expressing ... More >>

Kombucha Cuisine

House KombuchaScallop crudo.​Kombucha Dinner Where: House Kombucha, 498 Natoma (at Sixth St.) When: Sat., Mar. 19, 7-10 p.m. Cost: $48 The rundown: At the intersection of live cultures and cultural experience, the earnest apostles at House Kombucha are teaming up with the arty foodsters of ... More >>

Lev's Debuts Kombucha Vinegar

Tamara Palmer​Following the recent release of its kombucha extract, Lev's Probiotics of Treasure Island has just introduced two types of kombucha vinegar. Made with aged green tea kombucha, it's available in original and hibiscus varieties. The price point ($12) puts it below the cost of the e ... More >>

Humphry Slocombe Introduces Kombucha Sorbet

Tamara PalmerGinger pineapple kombucha sorbet.​We hurried to Humphry Slocombe today as soon as we saw a tweet announcing the debut of ginger pineapple kombucha sorbet, the first we've heard of anyone using the cultured beverage as dessert application. We got there about three hours after openi ... More >>

Lev's Charts the Next Frontier in Kombucha: Extract

Tamara Palmer​In the wake of the voluntary kombucha recall, Lev's Probiotics of Treasure Island (formerly Lev's Original) has returned to Whole Foods with a vengeance, or at least with a cool new product. Lev's Green Tea Kombucha Extract is designed to be added to all kinds of beverages and sa ... More >>

Local Kombucha Makers Actually Benefit from Ban

​It should have been a disaster. Healdsburg-based Vibranz Kombucha launched March 20, 2010, with a promising start. The company had just won a product award at the Natural Products Expo, which had brought them to the attention of natural-foods distributors, not to mention placement in every Whole ... More >>

Kombucha Starts Returning to Bay Area Shelves

As of last Saturday, Berkeley Bowl West was fully stocked with kombucha.​Things are still tense in the kombucha industry. Earlier this summer, several federal agencies announced they were investigating the fermented tea to see if its alcohol content was high enough to regulate kombucha like an alc ... More >>

Jessica Simpson's New Vegan Diet Guru Works Out of San Francisco

US Weekly​Jessica Simpson's weight is back in the tabloids again, this time as a result of a "desperate" and "radical" new diet she's supposedly taken on thanks to the advice of her spanking-new boyfriend, former 49ers tight end Eric Johnson. OK! Magazine reports that Simpson recently went on ... More >>

Five New Local Foods You're Gonna Want in Your Mouth Right Now

Besides eating and drinking everything in sight, our chief mission at the Fancy Food Show was to forage for compelling new products and companies from the Bay Area. And it was a success; keep your eyes out for these five new standouts, all available now:T. PalmerKari's Malva Pudding: Ready for Recch ... More >>

Tea Party Politics at Samovar Tea Lounge

The Mayor's Favorite Milkshake? A Frothy Blend of Voting Blocs Topped with Whipped Cream

jdlasica/FlickrNewsom's favorite is green -- and no, it isn't a Shamrock Shake.​Far be it from us to knock a politician for playing politics with food, but really? Gavin Newsom's iconic milkshake is a green tea creation? Seriously? Today the Got Milk? launched a list of celebrity-themed milk ... More >>

New Bottled Iced Teas from Peet's: Rrefreshment Without the Weirdness

Alfred Peet's tea legacy lives on -- in the fridge. Peet was originally from Holland, and grew up in the coffee and tea trade before opening his first store in Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto in 1966, long before there was such a thing. Now, just in time for S.F.'s fog-shrouded summer, Peet's bottled iced ... More >>

Around Town: The Chill Cafe

It seems a new frozen yogurt shop opens somewhere in San Francisco almost every week. In that kind of environment, how do you distinguish yourself? Trang Nguyen is hoping she's found the answer at her Financial District shop The Chill Cafe (125 Kearny at Post). There's much more on tap than the stan ... More >>

Last Night: Tea Tasting at Samovar Zen Valley

Janine KahnSamovar's third SF location is built into a Hayes Valley Victorian. Samovar Zen Valley Tea TastingPage at Laguna StreetsMarch 4, 2009Better Than: Brewing a generic, borderline metallic-tasting tea bag in your cold, lonely apartment.The Samovar Tea Lounge's Hayes Valley edition has been up ... More >>

We Love Lovejoy's Attic, as Well as Its Tea Room

We were reminded, when we read the following delightful passage from Writers' Favorite Recipes, our new favorite book which we wrote about here, by the somewhat insalubriously named Kay Dick, that we'd promised ourselves to revisit Lovejoy's Tea Room and/or Crown & Crumpet very soon, two perfect ... More >>

Tea from Two

Treat yourself to English tapas at tearooms old and new.

Reading the Leaves

LastNight: Mandy Moore Satisfies USDA Allowance for 'wholesomeness' at Fillmore

World Cup

And very tasty sweets that your Midwestern grandma would cook

Rose of No Man's Land

It may be fiction, but it's real

Best Tea

Best Fortune Cookie

Japanese Tea Garden

Best Tea Shop

Ten Ren Tea Company of San Francisco, Ltd.

Average Punk Band

This bassist is Salty and sweet

Brewing Conversation

At a proper teahouse, tradition and communion are at least as important as the libation

Full of Frappé

The only folks who should drink tea-as-milkshake are microwave-challenged Eskimos

Letters to the Editor

Week of March 5, 2003

A Little Slurp of Heaven

You can become a coffee man in five years. It takes a lifetime to make a tea person.

Tea and Hormones

Lemon Curd? What in hell is Lemon Curd?

Best Tea House

Imperial Tea Court

Best Tea and Scones

Rotunda at Neiman Marcus

Best High Tea

Ritz-Carlton

Pinkies Up

High tea

Best Place to Suck Giant Tapioca Balls Through a Straw

Wonderful Food Company

Best Atmosphere at a Sushi Restaurant

Blowfish, Sushi to Die For

Two for Tea

Afternoons spent on the English beat

Dish