Eye Level Pasadena

Tea brewing at Bird Pick in Old Town Pasadena.

Green peony tea

…in a glass teapot at Peet’s

Chado Tea Room on Raymond

Measuring tea

Chado Tea Room is my favorite place to go in Pasadena for tea and sandwiches. (You can also order soup, salads, cakes, scones, and strawberries with clotted cream.) It’s a place to sit down with a friend or a book for a light meal or dessert, but it’s also a place to buy tea by the ounce. There’s a wide selection; the back wall is lined with shelves of big tea tins, and they will brew and serve any of the teas in the store at your table, which seems to me like a great way to try a new tea.

Chado Tea Room
79 N Raymond Ave
Pasadena, CA 91103
(626) 431-2832
chadotea.com

Tenju Tea House

Robust free wireless

Tenju Tea House in Temple City is my current new favorite place to go and hang out with a laptop. The wireless is free and the bandwidth is great. People were there playing card games, eating birthday cake, working on computers, taking pictures of each other and just sitting around talking. It feels good to be there.

Tenju Tea House
5817 Rosemead Blvd.
Temple City, CA 91780-1832
(626) 287-2888
tenjuteahouse.com
Free wireless

Peet’s Coffee and Tea

Peet’s is one of Pasadena’s third places. All kinds of people come here to hang out: artists, writers, scientists, students, professors, police officers, house painters, real estate agents, business owners, people in between yoga classes up the street, beauticians, entertainment people, computer people, architects, psychologists, mathematicians, stay-at-home moms, teachers—it’s a mix of interesting people, mostly in the 30 to 60 age range. The outdoor courtyard area makes it little kid and dog friendly. The coffee is great, but so are the tea and pastries. This particular Peet’s has 30-something (I’m guessing from memory) loose-leaf tea varieties, and they order pastries from four different bakeries in the LA area (Europane, La Brea Bakery, Venice and La Provence, which is quite a nice little cafe in its own right, but on the other side of town). If you’re overwhelmed by the choices, I have a few suggestions: the rustic cherry tart, the bread pudding, and the sugar bun are my favorite pastries, and in the tea department I like Lapsang Souchong, Genmai Cha, and Xiao’s blend best. It’s hard to go wrong, though.

Peet’s Coffee & Tea
605 S Lake Ave
Pasadena, CA 91106
(626) 795-7413

Tea monster

a.k.a. Green Peony tea at Peet’s