I have seen Paragon Tea Room all over social media, especially in the beginning of the pandemic when everyone was ordering their at-home BBT kits. The BBT kits didn’t appeal to me so I didn’t check this place out.
Maki was telling me that she really liked the hojicha tea here, so I decided to stop by during the holidays to pick up a bag for her!
Paragon Tea Room is located in a busy area on Cambie Street, right off Cambie bridge so parking is hard to find. We parked a few blocks away close to Remi Patisserie and walked over.
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To my surprise, it was pretty busy here and there was a line up. The cafe actually has two shops – Paragon Tea Room and Porto Cafe. There are two separate ordering lines (with Paragon’s more popular) but they share a sitting area and washroom.
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Hojicha: Paragon specializes in hojicha tea from Japan. Hojicha is a type of roasted green tea with low caffeine content due to the high roasting temperature. There were a few different types of hojicha, and I was having trouble choosing so I asked the staff who recommended the hojicha bronze for drinking.
I don’t remember which is which, but apparently there is a bag that is better for baking vs. drinking. I’m sure you can’t go wrong with any of the bags here, but you could ask the friendly staff like I did for recommendations.
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Hojicha oat latte: Since I was here anyways, I decided to try their latte, especially learning that it there wasn’t much caffeine. My body is very sensitive to caffeine, even in tea. If I drink it in the morning, I still am not able to sleep at night.
For a rough comparison, hojicha has 8 mg of caffeine compared to 70 mg of caffeine in matcha.
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The hojicha latte was delicious! The oat milk made it velvety smooth and gave it some richness. The hojicha was fragrant and had a strong roasted taste to it.
The tea quality here is great and I would recommend stopping by. The tea powder bags would also be good presents to give.