IN THE BAG
Parkdale’s Plentea stirs up Toronto’s café scene with hot offerings,
Coffee has been a thing for a very long time. Tea is . . . getting there. Here’s a café that combines the best of both and might just change the minds of hot drink lovers.
Plentea, on Queen St. W. near Dufferin St., prepares tea in coffee-like ways — both pulled through an espresso-style machine and steamed in hot milk.
This new concept was cooked up by longtime pals Mohammed Bin Yahya and Tariq Al Barwani. They didn’t know each other when they were growing up in Abu Dhabi. But both ended up studying engineering at the University of Calgary; they met in 2003 at campus pub the Den.
They shared both a hometown, a love of tea (“We’re used to having tea to socialize,” says Al Barwani) and hopes of starting a business one day.
After graduation, they both ended up in Dubai with office jobs, which re-energized their entrepreneurial ideas.
“We knew we could do more,” says Bin Yahya.
Talk of a possible business eventually evolved into ideas of tea. While there were some adventurous food concepts in Dubai, they wanted to start somewhere people were really open to new ideas and the economy was stable. Although they’d never even been to Toronto, the city seemed like the right fit.
In 2013, the two packed up and moved here, sight unseen. For the next three years, they researched their product, got legal processes underway, found a venue and figured out their brand.
One pivotal move was a visit to a trade show where they met a manufacturer from Taiwan who was also interested in tea. They collaborated on their tea espresso machine, which allows for cup-by-cup steeping of different types of tea through an espresso-like press. (You can’t put something delicate like green tea into really hot boiling water; this machine can be preset to adjust temperature and steep time for different tea leaves.)
Ingredients for every cup are put together on the spot from a wall of dispensers containing things such as chai, cloves, mint and lemongrass
The pair finally opened their spot earlier this year with a unique menu of black, green, oolong, tisane and matcha tea recipes, as well as espresso. Ingredients for every cup are put together on the spot from a wall of dispensers containing things such as chai, cloves, mint and lemongrass.
“You will never see a tea bag in this shop,” says Bin Yahya.
They’re either pulled through the tea-espresso machine or steamed in milk for tea lattes (the grounds are then strained out).
This new concept takes a while to understand, so the tea menu, which contains names such as Black Velvet and Coconut Cream, comes with a mini-ingredient list.
These guys know their tea, and are gaining traction. On a chilly spring afternoon, the customers keep walking in, favourite orders and custom tweaks already memorized. This is how tea goes from emerging to downright hot.