Gillyflower

Gillyflower hasn't written a review for this place yet.

Gillyflower hasn't written a review for this place yet.

Put simply: I love Macha.

More detail: A friend of mine asked me to host her bachelorette party there, as she is not a drinker and doesn’t enjoy bars/bawdy games. Not only were the folks there wonderful to work with, they let us basically fill the house with our party attendees since the party was held when the teahouse would otherwise have been closed. AND the food was amazing: cookies with exotic spices, lavish cupcakes, little canapes that must have taken awhile to make, all presented on lovely platters and towers.

Not to mention the tea! When you host an event there, the package includes a certain number of pots of tea depending on how many people you have. The bride (who is a tea freak) loved being able to select the varieties of tea herself right before the party; there were few limits on what she could select, and this did not have to be done in advance. Talk about exercising your whims! They even let her refine her choices when the first selections were consumed or got cold: there was one she didn’t like, so she picked another to replace it.

The decor was lovely—candles, low benches and chairs, drapey window scarves, subtle lighting. They put the food/tea in one room, we had another for presents, and the largest one upstairs for party activities and hanging out. There is no cloakroom, but as this was November, they let us put coats/umbrellas in their small booth room since we were not going to be using it.

I came up with an activity that had teams, from which the bride would select one winning team. I couldn’t figure out what to bring for prizes until I realized—DUH: everyone is enjoying tea, why not help out the teahouse by buying small tea prizes, which would be picked up at the counter on the way out? The staff were great in helping out with this. My cost for this wasn’t too bad (I selected a dozen reasonably-priced teas that winning team members could pick from, 2 oz. each) and it encouraged people to take a look at the tea lists and purchase another tea while they were picking up their prize, maybe something they tried at the party! I understand the store made out fairly well that night. One non-tea-lover picked up her prize and gave it to another party attendee, who then ran squeeing downstairs to ask how long to steep it, what were some other choices in the same category, etc. and ended up spending quite a bit of money!

Best of all, I stopped by over a year later and the staff remembered me, even though Macha is out-of-my-way and and I hadn’t been there since the party! They asked how the bride & groom were doing, remembered that I liked white tea, and brought out some white tea choices for that morning. Thoroughly wonderful. Check out this terrific teahouse sometime. You won’t be sorry.