Bestea Bar

With a cute name and consistently friendly service, Bestea Bar has been on repeat as our first Rodeo 39 Public Market stop ever since they opened together in 2020. The largely unchanged menu focuses on several categories of mostly tea drinks that remain compelling even after many visits: Milk Teas, Milkies (minus tea), lemonade tea Palmers, Matchas, Fruiteas, and Specialteas. Charming individual drink names and recipes provide so many possible paths that it’s hard to choose just one per person.

Bestea’s obvious devotion to making its atypically tall drinks look as great as they taste has been a hook since day one. Topped with a decorative orchid, the Lychee Palmer is an ideal accompaniment to Rodeo 39 meals, remixing the classic Arnold Palmer iced tea with lychee lemonade, purple butterfly tea, and your choice of fresh mango, strawberry, or peach bits. As a dessert drink, the Ubae Swirl mixes ube puree with black tea, milk, and rainbow jelly into a largely purple and white milkshake. Thaiger Tea and Tiger Milk are riffs on Tiger Sugar’s famous black sugar milks, with honey boba and flower garnishes.

Several snack items – popcorn chicken, garlic parmesan fries, and shrimp tempura – have remained on the menu for years, but we’ve never tried them. There’s a lot to explore at Rodeo 39, and as easy as it would be to start and stop at Bestea, we prefer to think of it as the beginning of our adventures. Give it a try and see where it winds up in your rotation.