Chafolio just opened on the second floor corner location next to Lady M and across from Undercover Fries. I believe the location used to be a fashion shop, maybe a make up store, my friend mentioned it was a fancy popsicle place too, so that corner, maybe cursed? But there's another cursed corner in this mall, but I digress and I can only hope for the best for Chafolio.
My first thought seeing Chafolio was that as a nation, we're finally getting something equivalent to Teavana again, since I loved smelling the dried tea leaves and testing out the samples and it evoked a sense of nostalgia. The vibe is completely different, but I couldn't help but think of that.
Now with Teavana, and other places that have straight up tea samples (I'm not talking about milk tea, or what have you), like maybe, 123 Farm or other places that sell tea leaves for the consumer to brew at home, the tea is brewed up the yin yang. I suppose they really crank it up so you can really taste the floral/fruity/nutty/tea leaf flavors and then you like the taste and you purchase the tea leaves to brew at home. Every sample that we chose tasted super light in flavor, even when the sample looked deep in color.
So I'm a pea brained buffoon. I have purchased teas from aforementioned businesses and the only time I haven't messed up brewing my own loose leaf teas and it actually resembled the strong sample flavors were from some form of fancier Ten Ren derivative with a tea tasting experience and a really cool witchy place, but if it already tastes light as a sample, I will, as a fool, 100% mess it up even more. I could barely taste the difference between the teas too, super subtle.
Maybe only real tea connoisseurs or giga chads can tell the difference, but the staff was kindly helping another person so I didn't want to interrupt.
It's a really minimalistic, aesthetically pleasing shop inside. All of the tea bags are on display with the ingredients on display to take a smell, so that's nice. Free samples are nice too.
Maybe it was an off day and we might need to swoop in to try again. read more