Town Crier Online – Toronto, Canada
By Lorianna De Giorgio
Your search for a perfect cup of tea ends at Rosedale’s House of Tea.
Whether you’re in search of an English Breakfast brew to complement your morning array of eggs and bacon or just looking for an exotic fruit blend to warm you up on a chilly afternoon, owner Marisha Golla knows everything there is to know about tea.
It seems that it’s tea, not blood, that runs through the Sri Lankan-born proprietor’s veins. The tea trade has been part of her family history for more than a century. Her family owns two tea estates back home, where Golla worked as tea taster for the government’s tea board.
Golla and her husband Michael opened the Yonge St. store just north of Rosedale subway station only two weeks after their arrival in Canada. The oldest independently owned loose leaf tea shop in Toronto is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
“I like the taste of it,” Golla simply said about the product that she has based her livelihood upon all these years. “Coming from a third world country, it’s either tea or water (to drink).”
While the House of Tea’s success has become as sweet as the tea that Golla serves, the first year of operation, she admits, was challenging.
In 1997 loose leaf tea didn’t seem to be all that well known among Torontonians, and Golla wondered whether her business would survive its first year.
After all, Canada is a country filled with coffee and tea bag drinkers, she was told.
But with the shop’s anniversary this year, there’s no doubt those who might not have been familiar with loose leaf tea 10 years ago are now tea tasting converts.
And the years that have proceeded the first year have been nothing but joyous, Golla explained with her trademark friendly attitude.
“I love it,” she said. “It’s been very good. I don’t see this as work.”
Tins upon tins of loose leaf tea fill the moderately sized store. Golla carries more than 300 tea blends from around the world, from a vast selection of black, green and white teas to exotic blends such as Camillo, a chamomile orange blossom, orange peel, mint and lemongrass tea.
Golla also concocts her own custom blends to help a variety of her customers’ health ailments.
House of Tea is also populated with tea accessories — teapots and tea sets — that guarantee your tea sipping experience is as visually pleasurable as it is delicious.
The teas comes in 100, 250 and 500 gram bags, with prices ranging from $10 for an inexpensive blend of Blood Orange with Flowers black tea to $100 for a rare Japanese green tea.
And like all good businesses, the House of Tea has expanded. It has tea counters at both of Pusateri’s Fine Foods locations. And Golla supplies the tea for several restaurants, including neighbourhing café, Black Camel.
But despite her business’s growth, Golla doesn’t plan on expanding too far beyond her control.
After all, individually serving her customers in a friendly and knowledgeable way tops her plans of ever taking over Toronto’s tea scene.
“I’m not a person who has ever been interested in scattering myself around,” she said.
She leaves that up to her tea.
