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The site at 19 S. Court St. has been home to bars and a café in recent years but a new owner plans to revamp the spot in her own way.
Dylan Armstrong has a vision for the spot to become an international space for language and culture, with a bit of Athens passion. An international tea house is opening up at 19 S. Court St. on Thursday, March 1, serving around 30 different kinds of teas, coffee, Asian comfort foods, English foods such as scones, cakes and custards, ice cream smoothies, and "anything and everything that someone might (want when they say) 'I think I want a treat,'" said Armstrong.
The tea house will also serve everything the previous GG's Bubble Tea sold, as well as candies and featured foods from local bakeries Fluff and Village Bakery. It's new name will be The Dragon's Cup.
"I wanted something that I thought fit every culture," Armstrong said. "In every culture that I've encountered, there are dragons in lore and mythology. I thought that would be a good fit so that we could be inclusive, so that it's a full tea house."
Armstrong, who grew up in Athens, said she felt sheltered after realizing her school had only three students of different races. In high school, she began studying languages and cultures, and now has at least some fluency with Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Latin and Italian.
"I wanted to become more involved in the international community. I said, 'teach me,' and so I started making connections in the community," Armstrong said. She said The Dragon's Cup will function as a safe zone for language, where non-fluent English speakers can come to speak with employees and feel comfortable.
An unofficial herbologist and dietician, Armstrong has been preparing meal plans locally for years; her clients' needs range from money restrictions to religious restrictions, and she has found tea to be a necessary accouterment for all diet plans.
"I've been doing holistic herbs and local remedies for years. A friend of mine was in a pretty terrible situation at home, and he decided he would rather be homeless than stay there, so I taught him to live off of the land," Armstrong said. "I've been working with it for a long time, and I've had a lot of friends that are limited to eating certain things, and that can't have certain things and have been designing diets for a long time, and almost every time, tea has been a staple. There are so many varieties out there, that there's bound to be one that someone does like and one that someone does not like."
Tea house manager John Schindler said Armstrong's obvious love for her hometown, as well as her extensive knowledge of teas and herbs, led him to invest in the new tea house.
"That was the one thing that really sparked my interest and really pushed me to this, is the fact that (Armstrong) knew what (she was) talking about. It was very apparent from the beginning when we would talk about tea, that she knew every strand, the exact minutes to prepare things," Schindler said.
Armstrong said she plans for the tea house to be fair trade and organic, what she calls a staple of Athens life. They will be opening up the basement for games, concerts and comedy, and hope to feature local art on the walls. The Dragon's Cup will be open 24 hours a day through Friday of finals week, and from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. during regular hours.
