Algebra Tea House

Tea first, in a Little Italy room

Algebra Tea House opened in late August 2001 and has stayed a tea house ever since. Tea is the main business, with smoothies and shakes beside it rather than an espresso bar or a roasting programme, which puts it in a different category from most of what has opened around it in the years since.

Cleveland had few dedicated tea rooms when it opened, and it has outlasted most of what arrived afterwards, still trading on the same short list of drinks. It sits in Little Italy, a few streets off the neighbourhood's busier restaurant run, and that is part of why it reads quieter than its address suggests. More than two decades in one room, under one idea, is the strongest thing about it.

Bohemian rather than minimal

The room is warm, eclectic and a little bohemian, with art on the walls and a serene pace that has nothing in common with the stripped-back look most newer tea and coffee bars reach for. It is arranged for sitting: reading, conversation, or a long pause over a pot.

Indoor seating and a quiet register let it work as a daytime cafe and an evening tea stop without changing the way it runs between the two. Nothing about the room is built to hurry a table, which is unusual for a cafe on a street this busy, and it is the main reason people stay for a second pot. Little Italy fills and empties around it through the week, and the tea house keeps its own tempo regardless.

What to order

Begin with tea, because that is what the house is built on and what the counter knows best. Smoothies and shakes are the other half of the drinks list, and they give the place a casual, dessert-leaning edge that a strict tea room would not have.

On the food side, the kitchen keeps to Mediterranean-inspired nibbles, with vegetarian and vegan choices, and weekend breakfast specials add a reason to arrive earlier at the end of the week. Order tea and something small to go with it, take a seat away from the door, and let the room do what it has been doing since 2001. It is one room with one idea, and the ordering is simpler for it.