Rajeev's Tea Shop, South Mint Street

Found a very cool place yesterday beside the entrance of Southern railway divisional office, S. Mint street. Now this isn't your average tea kadai offering tea, milk and coffee. Nope! This interesting tea shop gives you a 100 healthy reasons to visit them! Yes, you read that right: a 100 different teas!!! 

I was crossing this string of fast food and tea shops when I noticed a big blue board announcing all the names of the herbal teas being offered by them! Thought it was a typical local fastfood joint at first! The owner is Mr. Rajeev quite young but in the tea business for some time now. Earlier, he had a teashop in MMC but shifted from there to its present location. Talking to the fledgling doctors there and with help from people knowledgeable of natural treatments, he set about adding herb after herb to the menu. In fact he says his shop was featured by a few newspapers and googling him that's true! :)

Link to an article in the Indian express:Here

                                                                 Special tea

26 Herbs Tea

Enough history, about the tea now.

This place is a finicky person's nightmare, with so many options I didn't know how to even start choosing! The superb pricing helps. Only ten bucks for all the teas! So you can try many in one go. And there were plenty of herbs with traditional names that I knew nothing of! Then I saw rarely seen names like Rooibos tea, silver needle (no idea what this is some Chinese philosophical tea maybe).

Finally, decided to try the normal milk tea first. It was very good spiced with the spices nowhere to be seen. Just the right amount of sweetness. Btw, the teas here are sweetened with palm sugar only not white sugar and the difference can be easily tasted. Next I wanted to try just one herbal tea so I asked them to recommend one healthy one for me. They pointed to a tea brewing in the pot already which apparently had 26 or 28 herbs! In a few seconds he conjured up a glass with tea that looked like rasam topped with fresh coriander leaf!

Taste was damn good. He said it helps with sore throat and is generally good for health. Tasted similar to a chukku kaapi but much stronger, peppery and with a deeper flavor owing probably to the many herbs. Looking forward to trying out many more teas from this place!