The best creative tea latte in Los Angeles

When I moved to Los Angeles a year ago, I was not sure whether I would find enough tea here. In my mind, I was doomed to encounter exclusively health-centric matcha-based protein- and collagen-packed concoctions. Mind you, nothing wrong with those, which I too enjoy from time to time. But tea? I was not so sure. Luckily, Los Angeles proved me wrong. In the past 12 months, I came across all sorts of examples that excellent tea not only exists here but thrives. You have to know where to look for it, almost like a treasure hunt....but there are plenty of options! And this year I want to show you the best tea Los Angeles has to offer. Ready? Let’s dive right in!

Cafe Demitasse, a local craft coffee shop and coffee roaster is pushing the boundaries when it comes to tea. They have three locations, of which I visited two, one in Little Tokyo and the other one in Santa Monica. On their seasonal menu right now you can find Beijing Sand & Fog, an oolong tea latte with orange and honey-infused basil seeds. It sounds pretty cool, right? Spoiler alert: it’s mind-blowing! I was so impressed by it that I reached out to Bobak Roshan, founder of Cafe Demitasse and creator of the drink, to learn more about it.

The best creative tea latte in Los Angeles. Beijing Sand & Fog

“I like texture, but I didn’t want to do boba or anything like that. I wanted to do something a little different,” explains Roshan. “After reading about basil seeds I thought I should give them a try. They absorb the flavor of whatever you soak them in. It’s not something that would mix well with coffee because they have such a subtle taste. I wanted to do something with a visual dimension, something with foam and multiple layers of texture and I thought that tea lends itself a little better visually and also having a subtle flavor to it. I had come across London Fog [tea latte made with Earl Grey] and I thought we should do something with a Chinese tea. We called it Beijing Fog and the basil seeds would be the sand… it just came together. We played around with different flavor profiles that lend themselves to a subtly sweet drink. There’s nothing in the tea, it’s just straight tea but you get a little bit of sweetness in the basil seeds. It’s a fun drink.”

That’s exactly what I thought when I first tried it. How fun and clever, it’s not a drink, it’s an experience in itself. First, you get the milk foam beautifully scented by the grated orange zest on top (I can’t have dairy but I can tell you that oat milk foam was a perfect match and alternative). Then comes the oolong tea, unadulterated, herbaceous and comforting. Roshan told me that it’s a loose-leaf Zhejiang oolong and not a tightly rolled one. Finally, you get to the plump basil seeds with their beautiful bouncy texture and subtle honey aroma. It’s served in a coupe glass and it could very well compete with any craft tea mocktail. Initially, I was skeptical that it would be too sweet for my taste (I drink everything unsweetened and hate sweet drinks in general), but I was pleasantly surprised to be able to taste all the layers of flavor and texture, perfectly balanced with just a hint of sweetness.

The Beijing Sand & Fog tea latte is a seasonal offering at Demitasse, so if you’re in LA you should get it while you can. “We always try to do some kind of tea option in our seasonal drinks. Usually in the spring and summer we roll out our sparkling sour cherry black tea. My family is originally from Iran, where sour cherries are a big deal. So we make our sour cherry syrup, we add black tea to it and then we make it sparkling. People want it year round. It’s a summer treat. But this is the first time we’ve ever done anything like the Beijing Sand & Fog,” says Roshan. “Usually in the winter (we didn’t do it this year because we had the Beijing Sand & Fog) we get makrut limes and we do a coconut tea drink with makrut lime on top. That’s one of my favorite drinks. It’s so tasty. It’s black tea, coconut milk and a little bit of honey syrup and we squeeze makrut lime on top but it’s only in season for two months in the winter,” he adds.

Other creative tea drinks you can enjoy at Demitasse are their Iced Shiso Green Tea (at their Little Tokyo location) and their seasonal Hojicha Mint Latte, an espresso latte with hojicha, honey and mint dusted with coriander powder. But Demitasse also offers a full tea menu which includes black tea, white tea, oolong and a sencha green tea from a little farm in Japan. They have put a lot of thought into the tea service, from the brew parameters with different water temperatures depending on the type of tea to the choice of teapots, where the steeping basket can be removed and placed into a separate dish to prevent over-steeping. They even make their own masala chai in-house.

What’s the role of tea within their craft coffee concept? “Tea has its place on the menu alongside coffee. We take the same approach to tea, we want to make sure that it’s a high quality product,” explains Roshan. “We like to do things that you don’t see other cafes doing. There’s no point in us doing something you can get at Starbucks. That’s what we do for our coffee too. That’s our approach to everything, doing something that you won’t find anywhere else.”