New boba lounge offers ‘Tastea’ options on South Hill

Tastea Coffee and Boba Lounge is about big city boba, featuring the newest trends: fruit jams, cheese foams and dirty sodas. Authentic Vietnamese coffee so good customers wish they could order it by the quart (Hint: try it with ube cold foam). Luxe furnishings meant for congregating with friends and snapping photos of your order.

On Sept. 17, married couple Meagan and Vinh Phung opened Tastea on Spokane’s South Hill, right next to their nail spa, Gloss Nail Lounge, which opened three and a half years ago. Prior to opening that business, Meagan had been working for Davenport Spa and Vinh was an auto body technician for DAA.

“During COVID, with all the bills and inflation, we’ve got to do something for ourselves,” Vinh said. “It’s just not working. Paycheck to paycheck just wasn’t working for us.”

At the time, the pair who met at Ferris High School had three children. Now they have four, ranging in ages from 15 to 1, with their eldest, Brooklynn, taking shifts at Tastea.

“I have a really good kid,” Meagan said. “She’s very responsible. It’s fun seeing her work in an environment with all the tools I’ve taught her her whole life, and it’s fun seeing her build a relationship with different customers.”

Brooklynn’s favorite item on the menu is named for her: Brooklynn’s Matcha, a vanilla matcha with strawberry cold foam. The family lives in Liberty Lake, which means Meagan ends up leaving work to pick Brooklynn up for her shifts, not the most time effective way to run her day, but sharing this with her daughter makes it more than worth it.

Though the shop offers the latest trends in boba, focusing on high quality ingredients, the Vietnamese coffee Tastea serves is all about the family’s roots. Vinh was born in Vietnam, moving to the U.S. when he was 4.

“When we open, we’re like, we’re going to do the Vietnamese coffee, and we’re gonna try to make it the best in town,” Vinh said. “We’ve done a good job on that, and our reviews say so.”

Originally, they wanted to sell banh mi as well, but came up against barriers because they would need to make them out of a commercial kitchen in order to sell them at Tastea. They currently sell goods from the Blissful Whisk, but there are future plans to offer charcuterie boards from Oh My Charcuterie, as well as ice cream in the summer.

Those receiving services at Gloss Nail Lounge have the option of ordering from Tastea or choosing one of the complimentary mimosas that come with their manicure or pedicure. Gloss, with a spalike atmosphere, distinguishes itself by not providing acrylic nails.

“A lot of nail salons, you step in and it takes your breath away, because it’s so strong, and then you hear the drills and see the dust,” Meagan said. “So we don’t have any of that, no drills, no acrylic.”