Kinley’s Tea House joins the local flavor of El Paso, sitting alongside it’s sister-coffee house, Kinley’s House: Coffee & Tea.
The tea house held it’s grand opening Sept. 20. It is conjoined with GECU, a combination that I initially thought would be awkward, but the tea room sits comfortably on the first floor with high ceilings and a Bhutanese theme.
The bank is located on the second floor with a couple of offices near the entrance of the first floor.
The parking lot of the tea house is fairly small, so arrive early if you plan on camping out with homework, or you’ll face the ordeal of finding parking elsewhere.
Upon entering, tables are lined against the walls with a fair amount of outlets available for use. Sofas and coffee tables are spread in the center of the house, giving it a homey feel.
Kinley’s Tea House provides a greater selection of teas and gives customers the chance to build their own shaken iced teas.
Prices are moderate, with a large jasmine milk tea at $3.75, which contains jasmine tea, house-made syrup and rice milk.
Building your own shaken iced tea is priced at $3.65 for the large cup but can increase with additions and sweeteners.
When building your own, you have the choice of choosing a base, such as dragon pearl or rose black. Then you choose a sweetener or flavor such as kiwi or strawberry for an additional 60 cents. Adding rice milk or coconut milk, for example, is 45 cents. You can also add aloe vera, chia seed, boba or rainbow jellies for an additional dollar.
The tea house provides a couple of food options, from building your own noodle bowl with moroheiya green noodles, a protein, bean sprouts and baby bok choy, among other possibilities.
They also have croissants available, the option to build your own cold noodle salad (similar to the noodle bowl), shortbread cookies and a veggie snack box, which has fresh vegetables and the choice of the tea house’s homemade sesame white bean hummus or organic peanut butter.
One thing that has crossed over to the tea house from the coffee house is the friendly customer service. There was a mix up with my order because the new register wasn’t printing receipts correctly, but the tea server acknowledged the mistake and gave me a tea on the house.
Then again, Kinley’s has been known for their friendly service so I would have been genuinely surprised if I encountered anything else.
Kinley’s Tea House has the same hours as the coffee house, closing at 11 p.m. daily.
For more information about Kinley’s House: Coffee & Tea, visit their Facebook page at facebook.com/kinleyshouse. Visit the tea house’s Facebook at facebook.com/kinleysteahouse.
Lorain Watters may be reached at [email protected].
