World Tea Expo 2014

The World Tea Expo was moved from Las Vegas to Long Beach, California this year. I’ve never been to this area of the country and it holds a great deal of interest for me to explore in terms of its culinary and cultural scenes. I’ pretty jazzed to have the chance to be out here for a week.

However, my first few days will be at the World Tea Expo doing tea things and pimping Teaity a bit to those who haven’t heard of it yet. While I still feel uncomfortable at times interjecting Teaity into opportunities and conversations, I’ve learned it’s a necessity and I kinda gotta get over it.

Day 1 started with a great breakfast on my way to the Expo at a place called the Blackbird Cafe. Based on some Yelp reviews I determined my best option would be the Dos Caballeros which is essentially as double dose of Eggs Benedict with Mexican flare. It rocked my sox. I think it was the best sunny side up I’ve ver eaten. If you’re in the LA/Long Beach area for breakfast or Brunch, this is where you want to be.

Delicious!

Upon arriving at the expo I collected my badge and set out to gather my blogger Press credentials, now with a little “heart” to signify we’re permitted to take photos ?(an improvement over the past two years with a blanket “no photos” policy.

After running in to Jen Piccotti of An International Tea Moment and Dan Bolton of The Daily Tea (who recently had a near death experience of crazy hollywood movie value) I made my way back out to the rotunda. There I bumped in to Newman Johnston from Teas Etc and chatted a bit about Teaity and some of our efforts and upcoming plans.

After a few moments, along comes Nicole Schwartz owner of The Devotea USA and proud owner of the venerable @amazonv handle. We spoke about a bunch of stuff, but had fun early as the doors opened to the show floor and we started exploring. After a while we found ourselves at the Den’s Tea booth where we snagged opposing photos of each other with the Den’s Tea mascot and I promptly got distracted by some shiny packing options for a feature I’ve been thinking of adding to Teaity.

Nicole of @amazonv and Devotea USA with the Den’s Tea mascot.

Sadly my iPhone ran low on battery and I was unable to take meaningful photos of other activities throughout the day, but I did make many new friends, rediscover some existing brands and open my mind to a couple new possibilities such as Hunan dark tea (similar or the same as a Hei Cha I had at TeaSource while at one of their locations in Minneapolis several years ago) and an interesting hand-rolled tea from Malawi by Satemwa.