One would think that San Francisco is a pretty good place for an afcianado of tea to live. Such a person wants excellent quality and a wide selection of tea, and it wouldn't hurt if there were tea experts to talk to, and places where tea could be tasted. San Francisco has enough tea shops that it meets these requirements admirably, and in Chinatown, you can check out several places in the space of an hour or two.
Here are my favorite places and a few comments about each (they are ordered from south to north as you might visit them when entering Chinatown through the Grant Street Gate):
Red Blossom Tea Company
831 Grant Avenue
San Francisco, California 94108
Phone: (415) 395-0868
Open 9:30am to 6:00pm, Daily
This is an upscale and sleek looking place with free tasting and a sophisticated website. Has a wide variety of exotic teas. Although I didn't spend any time here, it seems well worth a visit, and I'll be going back to check it out.
UPDATE: I did check it out.
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TenRen San Francisco
949 Grant Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94108
Phone: 415/362-0656 Fax: 415/362-0657
Hours: 7 days a week, 9AM-9PM
TenRen is a big world-wide company based in Taiwan. The Chinatown store is just one of the many TenRen stores you will find around the Bay Area and world. Most of the teas are from Taiwan, but there are a few imports from mainland China. They also have special spring teas, which are pretty expensive, but they ARE good, and they are packed in foil, which will make some people happy! Not a lot of english-speaking expertise here. Save your questions for the other places. If you are not into serious tea you can try the Pearl, Tapioca, and Bubble tea here. (I'll bet this is going to get me in trouble)!
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Vital Tea-Leaf Company
1044 Grant Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: 415-981-2388
Open ?? am to ?? pm ??
This is a new store, only open since June, 2005. It well appointed inside, and has a free tasting bar with ten seats. Has a good selection of exotic tea, most from mainland China. The staff is knowledgeable and friendly with good English skills. Seems to have the best prices on tea pots and cups. They spin the health benefits of tea a little bit too strongly for me, but I enjoyed my tasting here. I got the impression they would have brewed every tea in the store if I had just sat there long enough. Was told that the newest tea fad in China is to mix Dragon Well green tea with scrambled eggs. I'm wary of that bit of news, but it was fun tasting tea here, and I bought some oolong with an amazingly long and sweet aftertaste.
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Natural Tea Shop
1199 Stockton Street (Storefront is actually on Pacific)
San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: 415-982-8989
UPDATE: Here's another shop (on Pacific @ Stockton) that offers tea tasting. This is the smallest of the five shops that I visited, but it has a good representation of green, oolong, red, and black teas. It's a friendly sort of place; the woman sitting next to me was originally from mainland china, but now lives in Concord. She stops by for some tea and a chat in Chinese every trip she makes to Chinatown. I tried two interesting teas here that were new to me: "Blue Tea" and "One-Leaf Bitter Tea." The "Blue Tea" was had very thin thread-like leaves and tasted a bit smokey with hints of eucalyptus. The "One-Leaf" tea is a herbal tea which may also be known as "Kuding Pearl Tea-Jin Liu Tuan" or "Golden Willow Dumpling". It produces a green liquor which is exquisitely bitter. The hostess called it "Chinese Espresso." This is a friendly place, but it doesn't seem to be a place to learn much, as it is so small with a single hostess. I bought some tea and the bag said "Vital Leaf Tea" on it, so perhaps there is some common ownership between this shop and the Vital Tea shop on Grant.
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Imperial Tea Court Chinatown Teahouse
1411 Powell Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: 800-567-5898, 415-788-6080
Open 11am to 6:30pm daily
(Closed Tuesday)
UPDATE: The Powell Street location closed in 2007. The only retail store is now the one in the Ferry Building. Although it is very well-stocked and proper, the canary cages and old Chinese gentlemen playing Mahjong are gone.
This is the granddaddy of sophisticated tea places in San Franciso. All of the rest are tea shops, this is a tea house. Their website is the best tea website I have ever seen. It is full of information. They have tables and do a tea service which can be simple, or can be complex including lessons in "Gongfu" and "Gaiwan" tea preparation. You can order flights of teas and snacks to nibble on. Nowhere else will you find canary cages and elderly Chinese gentlemen. Seems quite authentic to me. However, nothing here is free. (Imperial Tea also has a shop in the Ferry Building).
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