Bestea Bar

With a cute name and consistently friendly service, Bestea Bar was on repeat as our first Rodeo 39 Public Market stop ever since they opened together in 2020. The largely unchanged menu focused on several categories of mostly tea drinks that remained compelling even after many visits: Milk Teas, Milkies (minus tea), lemonade tea Palmers, Matchas, Fruiteas, and Specialteas. Charming individual drink names and recipes provided so many possible paths that it was hard to choose just one per person.

Bestea’s obvious devotion to making its atypically tall drinks look as great as they taste was a hook since day one. Topped with a decorative orchid, the Lychee Palmer was an ideal accompaniment to Rodeo 39 meals, remixing the classic Arnold Palmer iced tea with lychee lemonade, purple butterfly tea, and your choice of fresh mango, strawberry, or peach bits. As a dessert drink, the Ubae Swirl mixed ube puree with black tea, milk, and rainbow jelly to produce a largely purple and white milkshake. Thaiger Tea and Tiger Milk were riffs on Tiger Sugar’s famous black sugar milks, with honey boba and flower garnishes.

Several snack items – popcorn chicken, garlic parmesan fries, and shrimp tempura – stayed on the menu for years, but we never tried them. There’s a lot to explore at Rodeo 39, and as easy as it was to start and stop at Bestea, we preferred to think of it as the beginning of our adventures. Regrettably, it closed in spring 2025, after roughly five years in business.