Tea is a marvelous beverage with such variety! Caffeinated, decaffeinated, herbal (caffeine-free), hot, iced, sweetened, Thai iced, you name it! Tea can normally be found at restaurants and cafes. Thai iced teas are normally found at Thai restaurants. Also see tapioca drinks.

Black and green tea are high in fluoride. The tea leaves of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) have high concentrations of fluoride and aluminum.

Where to Purchase Leaf Tea

Where to Get a Cup of Tea

Where to Experience Afternoon Tea/High Tea

  • Tea List - afternoon tea service
  • Ciocolat - high tea from 11-3 on weekends (reservation required)

Iced Tea!

  • Delta of Venus has iced herbal and black tea (actually a blend, delicious!)
  • Cloud Forest Cafe
  • McDonalds has a big foam glass of cheap sweet iced tea.
  • Mishka's Cafe offers an orange or lemon slice when you order iced tea, refills are $0.50
  • Tea List has many iced varieties and specialty drinks including green tea smoothies, matcha lattes, and ginger honey infusions

Where Not to Get a Cup of Tea

Questions, Comments & Discussion

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Has anyone perfected brewing tea with Davis municipal water at home? In my experience, the color and tannins come through very well, but the "tea" flavor doesn't come out at all. I get weakly tea flavored strongly tannic dark liquid. Over the next month or so, I'm going to try brewing with a variety of bottled water. If I can figure out how to post them here, I shall do so. There has to be something I can do to get good tea besides import municipal water from the East Bay. -JudithTruman

Hit a chem lab and steal some of their deionized water? Just tossing it out as an idea. —ct

I would suggest getting a Brita filter (the pitcher type). When I lived in Davis, I brewed tea with filtered tap water, and it came out all right. And I'm a tea snob. -MikeIvanov

Mike—I'm not happy with the Brita filtered water for tea. I'm trying for decent Irish Breakfast. Brita water is just fine for drinking plain, though. -JudithTruman

Interesting, let me know what works the best for you. Good tea choice, by the way! -MikeIvanov

Tea Snob Warning...I don't trust Davis water at all and didn't even try. I take the water out from the supermarket purification machines. It's reasonably tasteless but maintains a minimal character of water in the form of trace particles. Brita just doesn't cut it. The notion of using DI water kinda scares me though. Rumors of DI water leaching your soul out gives me the shivers. In the end, if I'm gonna pay $200/lb for tea, I better have water that at least won't come with other stuff. I do admit to bringing a 5-gallon bottle up to Tahoe and using that water down here; most wonderful H2O experience in my life, if such an experience could be had. -EricWu

For my water, I import extra virgin ice melt water from high in the Himalayas. This can only be captured the first week of spring, by yak back. After shipping in pure quartz bottles back to the States, it is triple-distilled, deionized, and then checked via NMR for the right proportion of double, triple, and quadruple water molecule clusters. Only then, is it ready for the perfect cup of tea. My tea? I buy whatever's on sale. -SteveDavison

Hahaha! —TheShah

Does anybody know of a place in town that sells Thai tea (leaf)? The Co-Op doesn't have it. -KenjiYamada

  • Try the supermarkets. I know one of them (Safeway or Nugget) have sold it in the past, and likely still do, somewhere on the "wall of teas". It took a bit of finding when I went looking for it. — jw

2007-05-22 11:04:39   As far as I know, the best price-to-quality ratio to be got in Davis is the Brooke Bond Red Label at International Food Market. It's only $4.75 for a 450 g box, and nigh indistinguishable to this non-connoisseur from the Barry's bags you can get at Cost Plus World Market (in spite of the fact that IIRC Barry's Gold is a blend of Assam and Kenyan). —RaghavKrishnapriyan

2008-09-06 16:24:44   Peets has the best black tea, but i love the green tea kim's sells. The hoji-cha they sell is delcious over ice, and it is only 1.50 for 16 tea bags. the lapsang souchong blend at peets is very good as well, as well as the russian caravan and the green tea with rice in it whose name i have forgotten (all loose leaf, of course). i've also found no problem in making my tea out of Davis water, but then again, it seems to be popular to hate the Davis tap water, so whatever. water is water and i love tea. also, if you bring your own tea bag and cup, you can get free hot water at the MU for your tea (or 15 cents if you forget your cup). super cheap. —ascapoccia

2009-10-22 20:54:20   The Tea List has a great selection of fine loose leaf teas from all around the world. They are at 222 D St (behind The Mustard Seed). —ibirdie

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