Tea shops · Columbus, United States
Tea shops · Columbus, United StatesNorth Market Spices
A spice stall in the North Market that sells herbs and a smoked Fujian black loose by weight, from a quarter of an ounce up.
A quarter of an ounce of chamomile costs four dollars twenty. That is the smallest honest quantity of anything sold in this city.
North Market Spices is a stall inside the historic North Market at 59 Spruce Street, downtown. Ben Walters opened it in August 2010, after spending years tuning the blend the stall now sells as the Columbus Rub, when a space in the market was about to come free. It has stayed a spice business ever since: more than four hundred spices and herbs, sold loose and shipped direct.
Tea is a small corner of that, about twenty items shelved together with the coffee and the cocoa, and the corner is better than its size suggests. There is a Lapsang Souchong from Fujian, described on its own page as fired over pine or cypress wood, and beside it the herbs a tea drinker actually reaches for: chamomile flowers, hibiscus, lemongrass, crushed spearmint and tulsi, all sold by the same weights as the paprika.
The sizes are the point. Everything runs from a quarter ounce to a pound, with separate bulk and five-pack options, so a first visit can leave with six different herbs for the price of one tin elsewhere. The house Chai Starter belongs to the same logic: star anise, cinnamon, allspice, clove, black pepper and cardamom, no salt, steeped and then added to tea or milk, so you build the drink rather than buy it finished.
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- US$ 3.50
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Where it is
North Market
59 Spruce Street, Columbus, OH 43215
Hours: Sun–Mon 10:00–17:00 · Tue–Fri 10:00–18:00 · Sat 9:00–19:00
What to buy here
Lapsang Souchong
Lapsang Souchong
from US$ 11 · 2 oz
The only true tea on the shelf and a properly smoky one, fired over pine or cypress, which is a strange and welcome thing to find at a spice stall.
See our page on this tea →Chamomile
Chamomile Flowers
from US$ 4.20 · 0.25 oz
Whole flowers rather than the dust in supermarket bags, and the quarter-ounce size means you can find that out for the price of a coffee.
See our page on this tea →Hibiscus
Hibiscus Flowers
from US$ 5.20 · 1 oz
Deep red and sharply tart, the one infusion on this shelf that is as good cold as hot, and an ounce of it fills a lot of jugs.
See our page on this tea →
The one worth the trip
Chai Powder
from US$ 9 · 1.5 oz
A chai starter without salt and without sugar is rarer than it sounds: most supermarket mixes are sweetened before you get near them. This one is six spices and nothing else, steeped and then added to your own black tea and milk, which means the strength of the result is a decision you make rather than one already made for you.
Every price we read, one by one
List prices read on the shop's own product pages. Open a tea to see who else sells it.
| Tea | Type | Price | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lemongrass | Herbal infusion | from US$ 3.50 | 0.5 oz |
| Spearmint, Crushed Leaves | Herbal infusion | from US$ 3.85 | 1 oz |
| Chamomile Flowers | Herbal infusion | from US$ 4.20 | 0.25 oz |
| Tulsi / Holy Basil | Herbal infusion | from US$ 4.99 | 0.5 oz |
| Hibiscus Flowers | Herbal infusion | from US$ 5.20 | 1 oz |
| Chai Powder | Chai | from US$ 9 | 1.5 oz |
| Lapsang Souchong | Black tea | from US$ 11 | 2 oz |
Teas you can find here
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Prices checked by us on Sep 15, 2026; they may change. No shop pays to appear here.