Infinitea

Infinitea was established in Bengaluru in 2003 by Gaurav Saria, who signs the site as "Chef du Tea" — connoisseur, gastronome, tea master — and the place is built in his image: a tea room with a kitchen and a retail store in the Shah Sultan Complex on Cunningham Road, in the central Vasanth Nagar area, with a second outlet in Indiranagar. Both open every day from 9:00 to 18:00, which makes this a breakfast tea room as much as an afternoon one.

What sets it apart from the other tea rooms in the city is the garden. The site ties the brand to Gopaldhara, a Darjeeling estate in the Mirik valley at close to 7,000 feet, and the Darjeeling shelf is where the range is deepest: a Muscatel, a First Flush Wonder, a green Emerald and a Silver Needles white all from the same hills. Around them sit more than fifty loose teas from elsewhere — a China sencha, jasmine pearls, genmaicha, a Japanese gyokuro, a ginseng oolong — plus kombucha, samplers and a corporate gifting line.

Every tea comes in a single 100 g pack, so the price list reads like a ladder: an Earl Grey and a CTC masala chai at the bottom, an Assam Orthodox two rungs up, the Darjeeling Muscatel and the China sencha in the middle, and the gyokuro and the silver needles at the top at twenty times the price of the chai. That is the most honest shelf in Bengaluru — it tells you exactly how much the house thinks each leaf is worth, and lets you climb one rung at a time.