Hana Tea

SPECIALTY

665 Halekauwila Street, Honolulu, 96813

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Hana Tea is a specialty coffee shop located in Honolulu, HI. Check in here with the Pulled Coffee app to earn real cash rewards. Specialty shops count toward all challenges including Pulled 50, Pulled 100, and Pulled 300.

Hana Tea's Halekauwila Street location sits in Kakaako, a few blocks from SALT and the Ward corridor, in a neighborhood where boba shops have come and gone and Hana Tea has stayed. The menu is Taiwanese tea at full attention: signature brown sugar milk tea finished with warm brown sugar boba, Hong Kong-style milk tea, assam chai, fruit teas brewed from loose leaf, and a topping list that includes cheese foam, brulee, and chrysanthemum jelly. Sweetness scales down to 25% without losing the drink. The afternoon line at 4:30 runs out the door, mostly Kakaako condo residents and office workers who walked over from Halekauwila and Auahi. Order the brown sugar milk tea with boba if you came for the drink that built the reputation. Order the Honey Genmai milk tea if you want the version that the regulars order on the second visit.

About Honolulu

Honolulu coffee runs across two registers at the same time. The Kaimuki bench, where neighborhood regulars settle in for a Saudi cardamom pour at Mirage Art and Coffee on 10th Avenue, a chasen-whisked Uji matcha at Daily Whisk inside Ten Tomorrow, or a Kona pour-over at Bean About Town on Waialae. And the downtown corridor through Fort Street Mall and Waimanu, where Drip Studio HNL anchors the contemporary specialty register and Cafe VNTG runs a Brazilian-leaning bar inside a vintage furniture warehouse in Kakaako.

Coffee here grows on the islands. Kona, Kau, and Maui lots show up alongside Ethiopian and Yemeni preparations. Most cafes pour something local. Bean About Town runs a 100% Kona program with the SL34 and Red Bourbon lots when they are in season. Talk Kaimuki, which Liz Schwartz opened as Coffee Talk in 1995 at the Waialae and 12th Avenue intersection, still runs a Sumatran-forward house program and the haupia latte regulars built years ago.

The neighborhood map is the city. Kaimuki holds the slow Saturday-morning bench. Kakaako runs the contemporary cafes around the SALT block. Downtown and Chinatown stretch from Fort Street Mall to Waimanu Street. Waikiki holds the visitor-volume rooms including the Junbi matcha bar at Royal Hawaiian Center and the Dean and Deluca outpost on Kalakaua. The result is a small city that drinks more carefully than its population would suggest, and a circuit that crosses three or four neighborhoods inside a half-day walk.