Starbucks will most likely hold its monopolistic hold on coffee retail, but tea seems to remains to be unclaimed. A shop called Lily Chai has opened its first store at the Irvine Spectrum near the theater and it embraces the drink with offerings of custom-blended loose leaf tea sold by the pound, tea-scented soap and tea-flavored sea salt, not to mention a bar where they pour tea drinks, both hot and cold.
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Yes, the word for someone that makes you tea here is still “barista”.
Lily Chai Tea, 59 Fortune Drive Suite 336, Irvine, CA 92618, (949) 383 – 4333; http://www.lilychai.com/.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.