| UNDER THE SUN | Patricia Escarcega Is Cha Cha’s Down for the Count? Grand Avenue cafe Cha Cha’s Tea Lounge will reopen, its owner says. She just doesn’t know when. BY ROBRT L. PELA people that there’s more to tea than we know,” said Hoekstra, the owner of Cha Cha’s Tea Lounge. “We always think of tea as very English, especially in the United States. But tea has its roots in every cul- ture. It’s very worldly. We give you the true tea experience when you come to Cha Cha’s.” They used to, anyway. Cha Cha’s, which A opened in 2018, was furloughed after wind and rain from an early August storm knocked out the Grand Avenue café’s power and ripped down a big hunk of its back wall. It seems Mother Nature isn’t a fan of oolong. “Or something,” agreed Hoekstra, who wasn’t amused by the irony of her current situation: “We managed to make it through the pandemic shutdowns,” she sighed. “I didn’t have to lay off any of the staff, we got the Paycheck Protection money and we set up a to-go station and people came in for shley Hoekstra has devoted her life to setting the record straight about tea. “Ever since I was little, I’ve been all about showing When will the tea return to us? their tea. We survived COVID. And then this happened.” At first, Hoekstra wasn’t worried when she discovered the damage to the building. She called APS and reported the downed power line, and a line repairman showed up at lunchtime the next day. But, “He said, ‘Hey, I can’t reconnect this power line to your building because it pulled your power box down with it, and I can’t put up a new power box until you repair the wall it took down.’” Hoekstra is waiting for the building’s owner to arrange necessary permits to make those repairs; until that happens, her devotion to tea has no place to go. Neither, she said, do tea devotees. “You drive up and down the streets here and it’s all coffee shops,” she carped, “where they bastardize tea. They’re not brewing it correctly. It tastes awful and it’s bad for you and eventually everyone’s go- ing to say, ‘Never mind, I’ll just have cof- fee.’” She said she worried about her custom- ers. “We’re hearing from people every day that they miss us, and we’ve ripped out a whole part of their day. We had become a part of their routine, a deeper ritual than morning coffee, something that was actu- ally healthier for them. They need what we bring, which is a more, I don’t know, Zen version of caffeine, I guess.” Hoekstra was concerned about tea fans maybe backsliding. Unable to get a proper cup of masala chai with milk, her tea crowd might return to Starbucks. “I brought Phoenix a real tea experi- ence,” she said. “You could come in and get tea from pretty much every tea-drinking country — classic English tea, Chinese- style tea, Japanese ceremonial-style mat- cha green tea. Eventually, everyone’s doctor is going to tell them to switch from coffee to tea, and we need to have >> p 17 9 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES SEPT 2ND – SEPT 8TH, 2021
