A boba tea chain that has won over the Windy City now hopes to capture hearts in the D.C. area.
Chicago’s Te’Amo Boba Bar is venturing to the East Coast for the first time with a cafe at the Mosaic District in Merrifield, where it’ll open at 8190 Strawberry Lane, Suite 5, next to Pastry Xpo on the ground floor of the Vantage Apartments.
Owner and founder Mia Wan says she regularly visits and has friends in the D.C. area. Inspired by the Mosaic District’s transformation over the past decade, she anticipates that the new cafe will lead to additional locations in the region.
“We…like the vibrant atmosphere for that location,” she told FFXnow. “So, that’s why we think we will open another in Virginia and the DMV area, but the first one we will open [is] in the Mosaic District.”
With a name that plays on the Spanish phrase for “I love you,” Te’Amo started out of Wan’s passion for tea culture and her desire to provide a healthier option than what she saw at “traditional” boba tea shops, like the one she once ran.
After selling her previous shop, Wan established Te’Amo as a brand in 2016, but before opening anything, she went to a French pastry school where she learned how to make the desserts that the cafe now sells along with drinks.
The first Te’Amo opened at the University of Chicago in 2018. Since then, the chain has steadily expanded throughout the city and its suburbs, choosing Chinatown as its flagship location in 2020 and opening in the Lake View neighborhood just last month.
Wan attributes the company’s success to its commitment to using natural ingredients for both its teas and desserts, which include mochi donuts, signature cheesecake baos (stuffed buns with flavors like ube, cookies and cream, and even pizza), coconut jelly, and handmade mille crepe cakes with 20-plus layers.
“We have a lot of unique stuff we will bring to this location,” Wan said, adding that the menu can evolve to suit the tastes of each cafe’s customers.
The core focus on organic ingredients doesn’t change, though. For the boba teas, that means using real dairy and non-dairy milk instead of the milk powder used by many other shops, creating lower-calorie drinks, Wan says.
The result earned Te’Amo an accolade for “Best Nonalcoholic Drink Menu” from the Chicago Tribute’s 2023 Readers’ Choice Awards. In the write-up, the newspaper’s food critic praised the cafe’s drinks and desserts as “not too sweet,” and Wan highlighted the strawberry lemonade, dalonga matcha (a milk tea with whipped matcha foam) and volcano tea latte (a black tea topped with Oreo cheese foam) as her personal favorites.
In addition to tweaking the menu, Te’Amo tries to give each cafe a unique design, changing up the color scheme and adding location-specific touches to the decor, according to Wan.
“We have a new design for the Mosaic location,” she said. “…There’s a lot of events going on and also there are a lot of young professionals around that area, so we also want to create an environment that’s comfortable, and during the work time, they can stay there.”
Construction is almost finished on the approximately 1,500-square-foot cafe, which will then allow the team to schedule health inspections, Wan says. If everything is completed on time, Te’Amo could get a soft launch as soon as mid-August with a potential grand opening later in the month.
Local residents and visitors will also eventually be able to get their caffeine and sweets fix at The Salty Donut, a Florida-based donut chain that’s expected to open at the Mosaic District later in 2024.
