Eli Tea Bar

Eli Tea Bar opened at 5507 N Clark Street in December 2021, the second location of a Michigan tea company founded by Elias Majid, who studied at Loyola and had been waiting for the right moment to open in Chicago. It took over the former True North cafe space in Andersonville and fitted roughly two thousand square feet with a retail wall, cafe seating, a walk-up window and space for a small stage. The reception was immediate: our soft opening was not soft, Majid said a week in — it's been an insane embrace. His reading of why is the clearest argument for why this kind of room matters in a neighbourhood with a dense bar scene: the only late-night option is bars, he said, and the shop immediately had a rush of sober customers. It functions as an explicitly alcohol-free evening venue rather than a daytime cafe that happens to close late, and it programmes events — drag bingo sold out during its first month — that give people a reason to be there after dark.

The drinks are tea first and tea seriously. The shop carries more than a hundred loose-leaf options alongside its own in-house blends, with kombucha on tap and a bubble tea programme that is made properly rather than from powder: fresh milk, Indian-style boiled tea, tapioca pearls, sugar only if you ask for it, and oat or coconut milk versions for vegans, with no high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives or milk powders. Coffee and mocktails round out the list. Baked goods come from The Spoke & Bird in the South Loop. Two practical caveats. The shop does not publish an itemised drink list with prices online — its Chicago menu page runs through a mobile ordering widget rather than a readable menu — so the range is best browsed in person. And its Chicago page carries the Michigan flagship's address and phone number in the site footer, which is a template oversight rather than a relocation: the Chicago tea bar is on North Clark Street in Andersonville.