Asha Tea House

I've been seeing tea houses pop up in the wake of the coffee shop revolution. T4 is a spot I usually visit because I can never tire of its Chocolate with Sea Salt Cream. But San Francisco is beyond the current reaches of T4 (or I haven't found its branch in the City yet) so I tried a different tea shop when the boba tea (aka sago) craving hit.

Asha Tea House is found on a quiet section Kearny Street. Though there was a queue that spilled onto the sidewalk, I didn't experience a long wait because the service was quite fast.

Once inside the restaurant, I found that there wasn't a lot of sitting space. Customers were just here to buy and to pick up their teas or their coffees. Asha's not serving food either so this isn't exactly the spot to lounge and relax after a long day of walking. This certainly wasn't like TWG, where people can sit down and enjoy their tea with macarons, scones, and other pastries. On the other hand, it evokes a memory of restaurants I've visited in East Asia because of the generous use of bamboo and pottery all over the store. 

The aesthetic is very clean and light, matching the tea house's mission: it makes everyone excited about tea. It elevates tea drinking beyond the usual cups of tea-bags-in-hot-water but not so high that it becomes an unreachable beverage.

But beyond that, Asha's Tea House is another example of the growing experience economy: it's not enough that the product being served is top-notch; its target consumers value the story behind the products and the proprietors' values as well. This is evident in Asha's website. It emphasises honesty as an overarching value in the direct sourcing of its tea leaves, the preparation of each drink from scratch, and its purposeful limitations in its selections (after all there are more than 1000 tea varieties, according to the TWG tea book). 

Craving for tea on a cold day in SF? Drop by Asha's Tea House. You'll pair a drink with a learning experience. That's always good.