Teasta Tea Shop is one of Noida’s, and even NCR’s, oldest tea cafes, started by Captain V K Mehra and his wife, Cuckoo, in 1996.

Speaking to The Better India, Mehra says, “I started the tea shop after I retired from the tea gardens of West Bengal where I was the superintendent manager of Rydak tea at Jardine Henderson Ltd, and looked after the tea estates.”

Prior to working on the tea estates, he had served in the army for about six years with postings in Assam and West Bengal. This was his introduction to manicured tea gardens.

The tea connoisseur would go around army clubs and other areas to give lectures on tea, its benefits, and the right way to brew the perfect cuppa.

It is an intricate process, he says, and every step influences the final flavour — right from the conditions in which the leaves are grown to its manufacturing and packaging.

The tea shop began as a small venture started by Cuckoo in Mehra’s garage in 1995. “We began by packing and selling leaves, while he was still in service. He joined a year later,” Cuckoo says.

“When we first started brewing green tea, it was an uncharted territory in the capital. We were one of the first to introduce it,” she adds.

The couple worked out of the garage for about eight years, before shifting to Godavari market, one of Noida’s favourite places for food. But the situation in the early 2000s was completely different. “There was no other eatery in the area, we were the only ones,” Mehra says.

As the tea shop slowly gained popularity they began seeing more and more customers.

No matter what time of day, Teasta remains the most crowded shop in the area, with customers constantly flitting in and out carrying tall cups of tea and coffee.

The drinks are accompanied by delicious snacks like ham and cheese sandwiches, burgers, momos, muffins, and cookies.

The tea leaves at Teasta Tea are directly procured from the Makaibari Tea Estate in Darjeeling and Mehra makes sure he tastes every sample before picking it up for his cafe. All teas and coffees are brewed in-house, with less milk, so the flavour of the beans or leaves stands out and the drinks are healthy.

A few years ago, Mehra opened the tea shop’s second outlet in Sector 46.

The varieties of tea include Darjeeling, CTC (crush, tear, curl), Kashmiri kahwa, sor-tib-tea, ginseng, jasmine, saffron, among a host of others.