I had gone back and forth on whether or not to write a review for this place, but decided to make…read moremy thoughts known. For context, we came here the second month after their opening, in April 2025.
As a longtime tea drinker, I was excited to learn that SereniTea was opening up in Cedar Park. The general Austin area had long been a loose leaf tea desert, with the focus on drinking tea for health benefits and general enjoyment versus the overpopularized bubble tea.
It wasn't too hard to find this place off of Bell Blvd, and there was ample parking available. Walking in, we saw an assortment of teas available, complete with the barware to match. There weren't any customers there when we arrived. Yet it took a little while before a worker came out of the kitchen to serve us.
We were told to sit anywhere, and after having chosen our table, we were given menus to look at. For what this place is, we thought the prices here are a bit expensive, especially for the specialty and premium teas. We decided to order a flight so we could try out different teas. The teas we ordered were Celestial Empress, Dragons Ember, Jasmine, and White Peony.
Unfortunately, it took a long time to fulfill our order. We saw a total of 3 people working to heat up the water, measure out the loose leaf tea, and get all the teapots ready. But still, we ended up waiting about 20 minutes before everything came out. We can understand that they were probably still working out the kinks of running a new business, but we think they could have benefited from a soft opening before announcing their grand opening.
Looking at what we were served, we were appalled to see how much tea leaves were wasted in the preparation process. They have tea leaves in both a small cup to allow you to smell the leaves after they have been steeped, and also more tea leaves in the teapots steeping for the tea itself.
As for the tea tasting, none were particularly memorable. The teas we chose were from different categories of teas: black, oolong, green, and white. Because the tea leaves were left in the pot with no way to remove them after the tea was done steeping, the teas became oversteeped and developed a bitter taste. This was the case for all four, including the white tea which is usually considered the most palatable.
I had the highest hope for the Jasmine tea, which is a delicate tea that tastes other-worldly when prepared and steeped correctly. If oversteeped, the experience is destroyed and you're left with a bitter tea more reminiscent of a poor quality black tea. Though Jasmine is one of my favorite teas to drink (I grew up drinking this since I was a child), I couldn't finish it here because of how bitter the tea became.
We were also upset that we couldn't get more hot water added without paying an additional fee. Like, really?!? I don't know of anywhere that charges for water refills. Besides, I thought we were paying for the tea leaves and service, not the water?
After bringing up our complaints to the worker, who apparently is one of the owners, we were dismissed as she said that the way they prepared the teas was the only correct way. I don't know if she was just being prideful or if she really thought that she had done well. Either way, it didn't seem like she took criticism well, nor did it seem like she knew the relational intricacies of loose leaf teas, water temp, portion sizes, the length of steeping tea leaves...and many more variables.
All in all, our experience had many red flags. I hate to be so critical of small business owners, especially new ones. If this place was a chain, I'd give them one star; but because they're independent, I guess I'll give them two stars.