HN Tea

HN Tea is a small chain of tea shops located in Tustin and Irvine focused on “Healthy Natural Tea,” specifically promising brewing with organic mountain tea leaves and no artificial flavors. In part because artificially flavored drinks use concentrates, and in part because advertising the opposite is smart marketing, HN Tea notes that a single “blackberry mountain rock” drink has around 40 blackberries inside, with similar metrics for its other fruit-focused drinks.

We’ve tried flavors including passion peach, raspberry, pineapple jasmine, and blueberry, which given their actual fruit content and 24-ounce size are reasonably priced at around $6 each. Intensely flavored and loaded with fruit bits yet not overly sugary, these are standout teas for adults who care about their artificial or otherwise heavily processed sweetener intake, though less appealing to kids accustomed to syruped drinks.

This isn’t a purely health-focused tea shop, though. Fans of dairy may like HN Tea’s milk teas, salted cheese capped teas, whipped cream topped teas, which range from around $5.50 to $6.50 before adding boba, red beans, or pudding. Similarly, the menu’s few coffee drinks all have either milk or a cheese cap.

HNTea closed its Irvine location at Harvard Avenue, which featured an unusual topographic map-like table and banzai tree, but still has two shops: one near the Irvine Spectrum, and another near the I-5 in Tustin.