Natural Tea Shop

Free tea samples of whatever you want to try. The negative, the tea is prohibitively expensive. I won’t list the prices, but if you go there you will see how ridiculous it is. I don’t know if its worth the money since I’m not a tea snob. Would come back for samples but not to spend hundreds on a small amount of tea.

I travel often through Chinatown in SF and a tea-​shop crawl has become a fun tradition. Despite all the choices I always end up coming back to the Natural Tea Shop because it is a comfortably small space and the owner is funny, cheerful and helpful; it reminds me of tea shops in China. Sometimes I feel the cost can be high but she is very honest and open about her selection, almost to an unbelievable degree. After many repeat visits I have found her constantly updating teas and replacing them to keep quality high. She also usually adds an extra bag or a large free sample as a nice gesture, so the total value includes her customer care and is higher than just the tea type you select. Some of the decorations are interesting pieces of wood from local forests. If you have time you may be treated to a performance because she also is a professional musician and dancer. This is everything I want a tea consultation/​shop to be; every time I walk out feeling my time and money were well spent.

I also encountered a very sweet girl who knew her teas and helped me find exactly what i was looking for. I left with two bags of tea, and after she weighed them and priced them, she added a little extra tea into each bag. I will definitely be back…

The shopkeeper we encountered here was an amiable girl who was very eager in helping us find the teas we were looking for, contrary to the pushy guy mentioned in some of the other reviews.
She sat us down and proceeded to inquire about what we usually drank and suggested a few teas for us to taste, explaining the health benefits of each.
The tea tasting is free, with no obligation to buy or any catch, but I eventually walked away with a trove of some jasmine green tea, puerh, and dragon well, all reasonably priced, not to mention that the shopkeeper also didn’t charge for what should have been few dollars of extra tea in the weighing, above the amount I said I wanted.

I came across this shop a couple of weeks ago — I am a frequent visitor to S.F. and Chinatown (my folks used to live here) but I had never noticed this shop before. I was in search of a fine green tea, RiZhao green. Most shops had not heard of it– but this shop had it in different grades and quantities. The young lady who was running the shop, Ms. Fang Yi, was charming and very cultured (we spoke mostly in Chinese). The price on the tea was about what I expected (its a bit on the high end even in China) and the quality was good. The shop reminded me of the tea shops I knew growing up in Taiwan — all in all a charming place.

Took my parents and brother to China Town for sight seeing. My mother is into green tea so we were looking for a place to buy «Chinese» green tea, you know, original stuff.
We stepped in to get some prices but I got distracted by the tea tasting they offered. We tried three and really like the stuff so I decided to buy some. All was good until this point, then it all went south. First off, they don’t really listen to you when you say how much you want to buy. I ended up buying almost twice the amount I had in mind. Second, if you do some price search, you will see that their prices are ridiculously high (personally I think all prices are blown by 2x) but I was in too tight a spot to barter (with my parents waiting and my brother dying to get the hell out of the shop.)
All in all, you can buy similar stuff at half the price if you look around. Step in at your own peril…

Nobody had to get pushy with me cuz I just stepped right up to pay $ 60 for ½ lb each of two teas. And, why was I such an idiot when I’m an avid tea drinker — and buyer — and had no confirmation as to the actual quality of the teas I was buying? I blame it on the touristic haze wafting around my brain after finishing a 3 hour guided tour — and feeling pressured to HURRY UP by my worn out kids.
I am thankful for the brewing demonstration and generosity with the tastings… but, I think they can smell a sucker from a mile away and saw me coming.
Lesson learned… Don’t trust the guide books and ALWAYS CHECK Unilocal!

I had a great time tasting tea here with a coworker one afternoon. They were definitely willing to brew us more teas than most shops I’ve been to. In the end, we bought several teas, but it was hard to buy just a small quantity from the woman at the shop. She made it seem like a language issue, and we didn’t want to be pushy. As a result we bought much more tea than we intended. And, in hindsight, I’m not happy with the quality of those teas. The shop is a nice stop to make in Chinatown, but be careful about what you buy.

In a word: pushy. The woman serving the samples kept pushing me to buy a larger quantity than I wanted. I stayed strong, but it was uncomfortable.

I walked by here with the Hubbie Saturday night from North Beach on our way to Market to catch the Muni.
We stopped in to sniff the jars, especially since the place was so open & spacious when compared with other Chinatown shops. The guy encouraged us to sit & try some tea. We did. He asked us where home was.
US: «Noe Valley»
Guy: «Oh, so you’re locals?»
US: «Yep»
He then continued to ask us what kind of teas we liked & we told him we tend to get most of our tea from Rainbow in bulk, with the exception of Persian Tea which we bring back from LA whenever we visit my parents.
We ended up getting the «Lychee Black Tea» even though we knew it was BS, just because it was a nice flavor & a new one to try. He kept insulting us [“this is the Budweiser of my teas”] when we told him we didn’t care for green tea or the oolongs, or the other teas he had in the store. He was REALLY REALLY PUSHY.
We told him we only wanted half of a small bag since we live in the city & could come back whenever to get fresher things.
I don’t think we’ll ever come back here since he doesn’t seem to respect the teas we drink [“those don’t have anti-​oxidant properties” –I don’t care; I drink Persian tea since it reminds me of my parents house. I also drink mint tea since it soothes my tummy. I like the way certain teas taste, not because of some health benefits]. He also wasn’t really willing to take no for much of an answer.
This tactic probably works on tourists, but I don’t think it works on us who live here.
He made me feel dirty.

Until I found this place, Red Blossom was my tea resource, but it has been replaced wholly in my mind. There is no comparison between the two. While Red Blossom is pretentious and snobby, Natural Tea is so cozy it feels like a living room. While the staff at Red Blossom is knowledgeable, they can also be haughty. Natural tea is run by a single guy, who could not be more personable (He could be more understandable though, he has a really heavy accent).
I walked in, and the second i said hello to him, Ming Dong gave me the tea tour of his store. While it is small, it has a wide selection, and covers not only the traditional spectrum of white tea to the deepest of Pu-​erhs, but also an assortment of herbal and medicinal teas. I spent a half hour sampling teas and chatting with Ming. I can not stress how amazing this place is, and i was a bit amazed it wasn’t on Unilocal before.
Final words, Go here to get your tea.