When Tamara Read built the Chantilly Tea Room and Gift Boutique in an old, hilly neighborhood hugging North Oracle Road, she envisioned “a little house that people would stop in to have tea.”
Thirteen years and thousands of scones later, she has decided to close its doors.
The little pink castle at 5185 N. Genematas Drive will serve its last afternoon tea Aug. 13. The boutique will remain open until Sept. 12.
Read says the closure will give her a chance to step back and “take a breath.” Keeping up the 3,000-square-foot space with a constant stream of special events requires her to work long hours, six to seven days a week, she says.
She has been deeply involved with the tea room, her personal vision, since the beginning. She designed the space with her mother, filling it with vintage teacups she picked up from various antique stores. It took two years of planning and construction before she was able to open the doors.
“I love the details of the building and that (guests) feel so serene here, and so at home,” she said. “It’s a place to gather and enjoy each other and the food that you’re eating.”
When staff members recently began to leave for various reasons — one for the ministry, another to be a dental hygienist — she decided it was time for a new chapter.
“I love it because I’m choosing to do it and I’m not having to do it. I would hate to have to be forced to close,” she said. “(Business has) been wonderful, it’s been absolutely wonderful.”
She is selling the building through Cushman & Wakefield / Picor for an asking price of $649,000.
For a month after the restaurant portion of the business closes down, she’ll continue to sell many of the dining room’s accessories in the boutique at the front.
She plans to keep most of the teacups for her next venture, which is still in the making.
For the past year and a half, Read has been searching for a place to relocate. She wants her new space to be less focused on the restaurant, but still plans to serve food.
She’ll also host tea tastings and cuppings, and will sell drinks like tea-infused frappuccinos. But she shies away from the “contemporary.”
“I want it to be more of a gathering place in a sense, more than a huge celebration place,” she said. “I hope that people will come and visit and enjoy tea and have an afternoon with us.”
Read is open to different neighborhoods, and says she’s more concerned about the feel of the place than where it’s located.
“It will not probably have the same elements of being quite as frilly, but it will still be very elegant and still be very classy,” she said. The current space “is very magical. This will be magical in a different sense.”
