A new tea house in downtown Stockton wants to bring imagination to life, one sip and book at a time.
NovelTea Events & Tea Room is open Thursday through Sunday by reservation at the Waterfront Warehouse, at 445 W. Weber Ave., Unit 144 A. The tea house is just steps away from Nena’s Mexican Cuisine.
Melanie Yamada, co-owner of NovelTea Events and Tea Room, described the tea house as a “whimsical, cozy, and inviting” space. A grand opening was held on May 31.
“NovelTea Events & Tea Room is a literary themed tea room that offers high tea experiences,” she said. “We’re also doing a lot of community events with an emphasis on literature and reading and a lot of things that are book themed. Then also, candle making, a lot of artistic, hands-on kind of stuff in a world that is so not hands-on and artistic anymore.”
Finding a happily ever after
Melanie and her husband, Kevin Yamada, co-own the Stockton tea room. The San Jose couple moved to Stockton in December 2021, Melanie said. They were both looking for a change, so they quit their jobs to open the tea house.
Melanie was at State Farm selling insurance and Kevin was a copier technician for Caltronics. The couple agreed they were missing the “fulfillment” from their jobs.
“It was one of those things where both of us had a really terrible day and you come home and you just look at each other, like, why are we doing this?” Melanie said. “I didn’t dream about being an insurance agent when I was little and I know he didn’t dream about being a copier tech. We were comfortable and had all our bills paid, but there was something missing.”
Melanie said the tea house was her idea, and had the name for years. Growing up the daughter of a school librarian, Melanie spent a lot of her time at the library.
“I fell in love with books really early on,” Melanie said.
While most tea house concepts felt the same to her like a “grandma’s living room,” Melanie wanted to do something different.
“It was something that I could use my creativity on to make the menu be literary-themed and be able to switch it up seasonally,” Melanie said. “It just was a kind of creative freedom that I’ve never experienced in any job before, so I was looking for something like that.”
What to expect at NovelTea
NovelTea Events & Tea Room hosts guest by reservation only. On the website, there are two options to choose from when booking: Once Upon a Tea Time or Tiny Hero’s Tea for children ages 8 to 12 years old.
The Once Upon a Tea Time option is $49 per person for adults. The Tiny Hero’s Tea is $35 per child. Both options include a pre-fix menu.
The Once Upon a Tea Time option comes with scones, soup, salad, sandwiches, seasonal fruit, and desserts. The Tiny Hero’s Tea, is similar but has different menu items such as Pooh’s PB&J and Sam-I-Am’s Hamwich.
Once Upon a Tea Time includes the following:
Melanie said all their teas are loose leaves and “very high quality.” They are also all sourced from Petaluma.
The tea selection includes Tamlin’s Tears, Rider’s Flame, Circus of Stars, Celaena Sardothien, The Hobbit’s Hearth, Marilla’s Respite, Wonderland Whimsy, Bronte’s Broody Brew, Little Women’s Parlor, The Bell Jar, The Archives, Ink and Imagination, Spellbound, Corner Chai and Rootcraft Revival.
The Wonderland Whimsy is “a med-heavy bodied black tea with a touch of honey-orange and a subtle mint finish.” Its description is “curious and delightful, each sip feels a little mad in the best way,” the website states.
The Spellbound is a “green tea with jasmine, medium body, softly sweet with a slight botanical flavor.” Its description states its “bright and enchanting, like the sweetest of spells.”
Some teas are also offered iced, Melanie said.
Melanie said it’s just she and her husband working at the shop, and all the pastries are made from scratch.
She said she gets asked a lot why tea and not coffee. Melanie said the “coffee industry is so saturated,” and tea has a different connotation than coffee.
“It’s more comfort and more cozy,” Melanie said. “It’s just that comforting kind of experience that we wanted to bring here. I feel like tea gives you that and coffee doesn’t.”
Reservations at NovelTea Events & Tea Room are 90 minutes long, she said.
Creating NovelTea Events & Tea Room
Melanie said she emptied the shelves in her home and all the books on display are hers or from her friends’ collections.
“Even people who aren’t big readers, it’s more of a place that I want to feel welcoming to everyone and encourage imagination and creativity,” Melanie said. “People who are not exactly excited with everyday life all the time, just like a little reprieve from that. So dreamers, readers, fantasy fanatics, all the hard core fandom people, that’s all my cup of tea, the nerds. That’s all my kind of stuff. We’ve had people of all walks of life, all ages, come in here and everyone has their own story. I really love that seeing books invokes people to tell their own stories.”
NovelTea Events & Tea Room is open on limited hours from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 1 to 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. On Saturday’s it opens 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. Kevin attributes their limited hours to the tea house being an experience.
“It’s more of an experience than just coming to have a tea or have a scone,” Kevin said. “You’re coming here to experience a tea room.”
“All of the stuff that we make is from scratch. A lot of the quality would be sacrificed if we were mass producing,” Melanie added. “Our focus really was on the food when we opened this place because that was a big thing I found lacking in a lot of the other tea rooms I’ve been to. We wanted to make sure that everything you ate here was something that you would enjoy.”
Upcoming events
NovelTea Events & Tea Room has a few events coming up from a Mean Girls Burn Book Candle Making Workshop presented by Serene Healing by Star to a Starfall Ball inspired by A Court of Thorns and Roses series in early 2027.
Melanie is working along with Serene Healing By Star and Bookmarked to bring events to NovelTea.
She is also selling other local small businesses merchandise at the tea house.
“We have a merchandise table and we’re really focusing on local artists or local businesses, small businesses. If there’s something that people sell, I have bookmarks over there, book foils, teas, I mean a whole bunch of different things,” Melanie said. “If anyone in the community has book-related or tea-related items that they’d like to sell, we would love to stock them here to help.”
To learn more about NovelTea Events & Tea Room, follow noveltea_209 on Instagram or visit, noveltea209.com.
Record reporter Angelaydet Rocha covers business and community news in Stockton and San Joaquin County. She can be reached at arocha@recordnet.com or on Twitter @AngelaydetRocha. To support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.
This article originally appeared on The Record: New Stockton tea house brings literary charm to Waterfront Warehouse | Exclusive
Reporting by Angelaydet Rocha, The Stockton Record / The Record
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By Angelaydet Rocha, The Stockton Record | USA TODAY Network
