Buena Vida Tea Bar & Garden

Buena Vida means “good life” in Spanish, and that’s what Mayra Vazquez aims to provide at Buena Vida Tea Bar & Garden, which she opened earlier this year near the corner of Lincoln and Montana.

“I’ve always been into food, entertaining and cooking for friends,”she says. “For me that’s the concept of the good life.” Now the neighborhood gets to experience it too at this cozy shop with a charming back garden patio under a pomegranate tree.

If your impression of a tea bar is formal and stuffy, Buena Vida Tea will be a refreshing surprise. “This is not a traditional tea shop,” Mayra says. “We don’t follow rules — we are all about diversity and love being eclectic. I’m all about abundance and community.”

It starts with the décor, which Mayra calls a collaboration with friends. “It looks kind of like a European café,” she says, “but you’ll notice that nothing matches, starting with the teapots and mismatched teacups.” Yet there is a special occasion feeling about the place, as one sips tea in a china cup, served with a delicious pastry, seated at a Mexican tile table in the breezy patio.

In a world where traditional English tea is served in the afternoon, “Here you don’t have to wait,” Mayra says. “You can come in as early as 10 am if that’s when you’d like!”
Buena Vida Tea specializes in pairing tea with treats. “We bring in teas from all over the world,” she says — India, China, Africa, Brazil, Japan and more, all organic where possible, kosher-certified and curated by a master from Sri Lanka.

“Then we pair those teas with an eclectic mix of sweet and savory treats,” she says: from traditional scones served with California-made clotted cream and raspberry jam, to Argentine empanadas and all kinds of cakes. “We work with different local pastry chefs that we feature throughout the week. It gives us an opportunity to showcase pastry chefs that otherwise people wouldn’t know, and we are proud to share our chefs’ stories with our customers.”

Buena Vida Tea’s community spirit extends to the service too, Mayra says. “We know you, we call you by your name, and when we serve that cup of tea, it’s part of the whole experience of sitting and sipping on the patio.”

Puerto Rico-born and Florida-educated, Mayra came to California in the late 1980s to work for Sony Music Latin, where she developed Mexican country music for the US market and took care of artists including Shakira and Ricky Martin. “I remember when Shakira was a big star in Colombia, but nobody knew her yet in the US,” she says.

“I always said that when I retired from the music industry, I wanted to get into the food industry,” Mayra reflects. “I started studying wine, but then tea found me. The minute I started learning more about tea, I said, ‘This is it! This is my passion!’”

The shop was years in the planning, and when the right space opened up, a former flower shop on Montana Ave, Mayra and business and life-partner Marcelino Miyares, Jr. jumped in with both feet. Marcelino, owner of an advertising agency, continues to help with the shop and oversees marketing. And indeed the community has come; the diversity of Buena Vida Tea’s menu and decor is matched by the diversity of its customers: everyone from dyed-in-the-wool tea drinkers to first-timers.

Even kids have taken to Buena Vida Tea. “We had one tea party for a five-year-old girl and her friends who came dressed up like princesses — so cute!” Mayra grins. “And then we had a birthday party for an 11-year-old boy. The kids showed up in suits and tennis shoes! I don’t know if they had been watching Downton Abbey or what had them dressing up.”
It seems that everyone appreciates the good life at Buena Vida Tea Bar.

Visit Buena Vida Tea Bar and Garden at 726 Montana Ave.

BY ANDREW BENDER | PHOTOS COURTESY BUENA VIDA TEA BAR & GARDEN