From the hills of Ooty to a café on Mt Pleasant Rd, Toronto.

Ootea began with a memory.

A small steel tumbler. The hiss of milk hitting boiling tea. The smell of cardamom rising from a hillside kitchen in Ooty, where our family first learned to make chai.

When we moved to Toronto, the tea we missed most was the tea we couldn't find. So we started making it ourselves — cup by cup, slowly, properly — first from a small tea truck, and now from our café on Mt Pleasant Rd, Toronto.

We work with growers we know by name. We grind our spices in-house. We brew every cup the way our families taught us.

It isn't fancy. It's just honest tea, made with care.