High tea in Tucson comes with a Filipino twist at Himaya Garden.
Mother-daughter duo Odette and Milana D'Aniello are no strangers to good food. And in their Tucson venue at 427 E. Limberlost Dr., they share their homemade food with the rest of the community in the form of high tea, complete with the classic teacups and tiny plates.
“I’ve worked too hard now,” Odette said. “Now it’s for my inner child.”
Odette’s first bakery job was in Guam when she was 10 years old after immigrating from Cebu, a city in the Philippines.
She described Cebu as a place of friendship and connection, and that’s exactly what she brings to her tea house.
Odette D'Aniello, owner of Himaya Garden, poses for a portrait on Feb. 26.
“Everyone is so happy despite all kinds of disasters or all kinds of challenges,” Odette said. “It's the happiest, warmest place, which is basically my personality.”
Her family bakery, Celebrity Cake Studio, started in Tacoma, Washington, and recently celebrated 25 years. In 2016, the family bought Dragonfly Cakes, which makes artisan tea cakes.
The purchase introduced the family to the world of tea parties. Odette said she loves to host events and parties, so having their own tea house was a step she wanted to take on.
She found the listing for the Tucson property in an email and had an offer ready the same day.
“We were like, ‘Oh we can do this,’” Milana said, when recalling her brainstorm session on what to do with the space with her family.
And they did do it all as a family, officially opening Himaya Garden for high tea in April of last year. But when they first entered the property, the trees were barely alive, the ground was dust and most of the plants were dead.
“I looked at it like, you know, I can revive this garden, I can do that,” Odette said.
Couples tour Himaya Garden during their Event & Wedding Fair on Feb. 26.
As a permaculture enthusiast, she wanted to enliven the garden while not hurting the desert landscape. A safe cover was used on the ground and she was able to bring back the greenery after tending to the garden diligently.
“We literally waited for the green grass to grow,” Odette said.
The two of them, along with Milana’s father and brother, weeded the ground, changed the floorboards and decorated the tea house.
“Speckle the walls, that’s me. Book a tour, that’s me,” Milana said. “Whatever you need, I got it.”
Couples tour Himaya Garden during their Event & Wedding Fair on Feb. 26.
Milana and Odette are both graduates from the University of Arizona, and now Milana works full-time for the family business as the director of marketing.
She grew up working in a bakery, just like Odette. But instead of slicing bread in the hot Guam weather, Milana’s first job was to make beautiful sugar flowers for the family bakery.
This family of bakers is also full of heart, and it shows through the homestyle cooking.
Initially, the duo wanted to make fusion foods, combining high tea snacks with Filipino flavors. But after trying to infuse their food into puffs and tartlets, they decided to go all in and pair the tea and fancy place settings with traditional Filipino food.
Himaya Garden hosts monthly tea parties.
“(This is) a very different way to serve Filipino food,” Odette said. “Filipino food is usually like a pile on your plate.”
“I’m going to cook what’s easy for me,” said Odette, who is also the head chef at Himaya Garden. Items served include chicken adobo, lumpia and ube biko, which is a rice dessert. No one leaves the high tea hungry, they said.
Besides bringing Filipino flavors to Tucson, the family is also helping the Filipino community embrace their culture and flavor. Milana recalled a time when a customer attended a high tea and started crying because Odette’s cooking reminded her of her late mother’s food.
“It's a lot of healing for people who have lost their identity from their heritage,” Odette said.
They chose the Filipino name Himaya for the tea house because it means “unexplainable joy” in Cebuano. The hope is that Himaya Garden can be used to bring joy to the community as a venue for all types of events, from weddings to baby showers, in addition to high tea.
When they first started hosting tea parties, the servers and cooks were all members of the family. Now they have a small staff and host two high tea seatings every month. The next one is March 9 at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. You can get tickets, which are $59.99, here.
“We want to say goodbye loneliness,” Odette said. “We want connection for people.”
Couples tour Himaya Garden during their Event & Wedding Fair on Feb. 26.
