The family behind L.A.’s most popular Thai restaurant is opening a Thai tea boba shop
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- The Westminster ChaTraMue will be the first in Orange County.
- The family behind Jitlada restaurant is hoping to teach more diners about Thai culture with the new shop that will specialize in Thai tea.
- All of the teas from ChaTraMue OC will come from the brand’s tea farm in northern Thailand.
There’s a delicate art to brewing the Thai tea at ChaTraMue, the Thailand-based tea shop that’s been around since 1945. It starts with Thai tea leaves sourced from a farm in Chiang Rai. The leaves are placed in a long white filter over a gleaming silver pitcher, then another pitcher of hot water is poured over the leaves. The tea is transferred back and forth from one pitcher to the other, a process that both aerates and cools the liquid. It’s a lengthy, laborious tea pulling method that lasts several minutes and requires patience and stamina.
“It’s called chak cha,” says Sirine Singsanong Bunkua, standing behind the counter at the new ChaTraMue in Westminster. “You pour, pour, pour, pour,” she says, transferring the darkening liquid from one pitcher to another.
Sirine and her husband, Nick Bunkua, will open the first ChaTraMue in Orange County on Saturday, in a small strip mall just east of Magnolia Street on Bolsa Avenue.
The shop will specialize in Thai tea, an orange sherbet-colored beverage made with fragrant red tea and a mixture of condensed milk and evaporated milk over ice. The ChaTraMue version is tea forward, with the rich red tea front and center, softened only slightly by the milk. You can adjust the sweetness to a level you prefer, but 70% feels balanced and not overly sweet.
“ChaTraMue was actually the originator of Thai tea,” Nick says. He grew up drinking Thai tea from the various ChaTraMue locations scattered all over Thailand.
“It’s the type of milk tea you can have multiple times a day,” he says. “Every time I get on and off the train there, I buy it.”
ChaTraMue was started by the Han family, who emigrated from China and settled in the Chinatown area of Bangkok in the 1920s. They opened a tea shop, selling hot teas imported from China. After the original shop was bombed during World War II, the family relocated and adjusted their offerings to accommodate the warm climate. They started the ChaTraMue brand in 1945 and started brewing red tea and serving it with milk and sugar over ice. The drink is now served in Thai restaurants and coffee shops all over the world.
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Sirine and Nick will attempt to stay as true to the original ChaTraMue as possible, using the chak cha method to make the teas for the shop. In addition to the classic Thai tea, there will be coffee, matcha milk tea, lattes and an entire line of vegan drinks. The rose tea gets its floral nose from rose petals infused with the tea leaves and a seasonal peach tea is flavored with bits of dried fruit.
It was important for Sirine, a self-proclaimed “boba aficionado,” to offer a range of boba. There are green pandan and brown sugar boba, or you can opt for konjac pearl or konjac brown sugar jelly.
The shop will also sell a variety of ChaTraMue tea leaves to brew at home and plenty of merch.
While there is a franchise location of ChaTraMue in both downtown L.A. and Rosemead, the Bunkuas own the rights to the ChaTraMue franchise in Orange County, something Sirine says has been a dream of hers for decades.
When she and Nick started dating more than a decade ago, their relationship revolved around tea and boba. Every weekend, the couple would drive around Orange County in search of new boba shops. Sirine became a project manager for Tokyo Disneyland and Walt Disney Imagineering. The two continued to talk about opening a boba tea shop, but never thought it would become a reality, despite both of their families being in the restaurant business.
Sirine’s mother is Sarintip “Jazz” Singsanong, the chef-owner of Jitlada Southern Thai restaurant in Thai Town. Sirine spent a good chunk of her childhood at the restaurant, watching her mother and her uncle, the late Tui Sungkamee, concoct the restaurant’s complex, fiery curries, salads and stir fries. Her cousin Jaratporn “Sugar,” Sungkamee’s daughter, runs the restaurant with Singsanong.
The family is often viewed as unofficial ambassadors to Thai culture and food in Southern California.
“Bringing a Thai brand to Orange County with something trendy like boba, but having it be something that takes you back to our Thai roots, is really important to us,” says Sirine. “We consider ourselves Thai American and this is our way of helping to teach Thai culture to a newer generation who loves boba and cares about natural foods.”
And much like at Jitlada, ChaTraMue is a family affair.
Nick and his late mother, Wanida Sreewarom, operated Thai Nakorn restaurant in Stanton. His cousin Linda Sreewarom now owns the restaurant. She and Sugar both spent a week training with ChaTraMue in Bangkok and serve as training managers for the staff at the Westminster location.
While Jazz doesn’t have an official role at ChaTraMue, she says she’ll be a frequent fixture at the shop.
“She’s a crazy lady because she has two kids and never has any time, but she loves boba and she didn’t give up on her dream,” Jazz says of her daughter. “We have a chance to spread more Thai culture to people and I’m really proud that they’re doing it.”
If all goes well, the plan is to eventually open more ChaTraMue shops in Orange County.
“I want to give everyone the opportunity to learn more about our culture,” Sirine says. “It’s for every generation.”
Where to go for Thai tea in O.C.
Cha Tra Mue OC, 9242 Bolsa Ave., Westminster
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