Right now in the silent struggle to be cool, tea is kicking coffee’s ass all over the place. You might expect Miami, with all its Caribbean and Latin American influences, to be a stronghold for the energising bean, but even here tea is calmly making its mark with places like Small Tea.
Small Tea’s Venezuelan owner Daniel Benoudiz believes Miami is ready to embrace the leaf, and his new Coral Gables tea house encourages an exploration of the different aromas, tastes and textures of tea while providing expert help for novices. There’s a central “smelling station” at which to develop an olfactory appreciation of a varied range of teas, which can be bought by the pound and taken home in a nifty Japanese copper container. These vessels take over 100 steps to make, and their lustre contributes greatly to OSMOSE‘s warm interior scheme — it’s the kind of place I’d imagine Auric Goldfinger calling in for a cuppa. The Oregon studio has used tea equipment as decoration throughout, creating a functional space without any lab-like sterility.
