Meet Amy Truong of Paru Tea Bar

San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Ted Lasso is the hero we need and America’s de facto life coach, but he needs to fix himself when it comes to tea. It is finally taking off in U.S. culture, at least partially because consumers are looking for healthier drinks and are increasingly sober-curious. Sure it took a while. Ever since they threw the king’s stash into the Boston Harbor, coffee seized power and has served a few thousand consecutive terms in the part of our hearts where we keep the love for hot beverages. But now specialty tea—sourced from very specific, often family-owned tea gardens across the world—is ascending our love charts in U.S. culture. It seems like it took matcha—a tea the color of Instagram—to open our hearts to coffee’s low-key cousin, but we’re here for it. San Diego’s Paru Tea Bar—the good-tea concept by married couple, Amy Truong and Lani Gobaleza—is proof. On this podcast, Truong explains their humble beginnings in 2017 (she would collect rideshare scooters and charge them to earn extra money while they launched their business in a series of pop-up tea events). They opened their first brick and mortar in Point Loma in 2019, and now they just unveiled their second —a 1,200 square-foot tea sanctuary and art gallery on Girard Street in La Jolla (their first art exhibits feature a La Jolla High alum who used dried Paru tea leaves to paint her work. At the shop they’ll be house-milling matcha, the only shop in California to do so. So people caught up in the grasp of the matcha movement can taste it freshly pulverized, not bagged and shipped. In “Hot Plates,” Troy and David talk through a spate of new openings in San Diego, including: the city’s first absinthe bar and bistro, Wormwood; the new high-design distillery, Swan Bar; a new concept in Torrey Pines from the group behind Lionfish and Serea; and one of our favorite Italian chefs, Accursio Lota of Cori Pasificio. In “Two People, Fifty Bucks,” David raves about the carnivore catnip down at El Barbecue from chef Ami Cisneros (formerly chef at Grand Ole BBQ); Amy points to her favorite spring roll joint in Hillcrest, Goi Con; and Troy is rekindling his love affair with sushi at two of his favorite sushi joints within walking distance of each other in Bankers Hill (Hane and Azuki).