Tea Chapter is the first pre-war shophouse to have been carefully restored in the late 80s but it’s also been visited by heavyweights and dignitaries alike: the Queen Elizabeth II and our own PM Lee Hsien Loong have stepped through these very doors. What you see today is a three-storey shophouse in the Chinatown Historic District, charmingly mindful of its heritage status and well looked after, but it wasn’t always this way. There’s a curious start behind Tea Chapter, with origins that date back to 1989. Its humble beginnings came about when schooling friends found common ground over Chinese tea and traditional tea ceremonies.
At Tea Chapter, you’ve got three different spaces: “Oriental” where Queen Elizabeth had first sipped on an Imperial Golden Cassia tea, “Japanese” on the third floor with low wooden tables, and “Korean” with curtains hung for privacy. You can head down to Tea Chapter to try their tea for yourselves, or a Tea Appreciation Workshop (from $48/person) by booking here. They offer workshops in either English or Mandarin, and from Mondays to Sundays in the afternoon.