The Groundbreaking Alchemy of a Sapphic Tea Shop

It's an unassuming little corner of the Black Shroud. The oft-forgotten Halicarnassus neighborhood of the Lavender Beds, Ward 7 Plot 52. Nestled among the small shops of the Wildflower Stalls is a strangely Eastern-looking shop. This incongruity is one of many that patrons who travel to this distant little haven encounter. 

Depending who is asked, Atelier Eliza Coffee and Tea was either established in 7AE11 or the Black Lotus Teahouse was established in 7AE7. The bones of the place certainly belong to the earlier occupant. Hingan lumber, the stylistic arched roofs of the far east, a naturalistic stone and plantlife-filled lobby. It's former owner's sensibilities leave marks throughout what is today Atelier Eliza. But it pointedly is no longer its former self. It has been reinvented. It hasn't been hollowed entirely to be repurposed, but it has had its core properties changed. Downstairs is a positively Ishgardian tea salon, another warm contradiction in the Atelier's design. 

Alchemy is in the blood of the Blanchimont family. So, when the eldest daughter of famous, or infamous, inventor Lady Iris Blanchimont came to inherit the Black Lotus Teahouse, Eliza Blanchimont saw opportunity. There's a uniqueness to the way Blanchimonts have wielded their alembic that has grown over the centuries of the family's history. While the details are somewhat guarded, Eliza explained the broad strokes as being somewhat reminiscent of the legendary heights of creation magic, on a more achievable scale. 

"We draw out the aether of ingredients, and recombine it with other ingredients to achieve things that simple chemistry couldn't," she explained. "And that's basically what alchemy is. We just have learned to harnass it in a different way, a more open-ended way. And that's how we get Atelier Eliza."

The Atelier also caters specifically to a sapphic clientele. While those who aren't women loving women are welcome and will be served, the space is explicitly intended to provide sanctuary to queer femme-identified Spoken. In recent years, the needs for places where sapphic women meet have been increasingly underserved as the hospitality industry chases heterosexual demographics in venues like nightclubs or brothels. At the Atelier, queer women are free to express themselves among like-minded Spoken.

"There are a few places like us, I actually work at a sapphic bar as well," said the Atelier's general manager Korrine Abel. Abel is a particularly tiny Viera who only recently arrived in Eorzea, and found haven at the Atelier. She continued, "Still it feels like I can count the number of them on my fingers. We don't want to just pair up alchemy and gastronomy, we want to pair up women who need a place with a place, and with one another. We want to be a part of a larger lesbian community."

An atelier - the old Ishgardian word for a workshop - has long been the name of where Blanchiumont medicine-makers worked. Eliza doesn't consider what her tea shop does to be that fundamentally different. Cooking, she says, is just another form of alchemy. Working with her sisters Ivy, Mercy, and Lita, Eliza has compiled family recipes from figures both personal to her and instrumental to her family; from cousin Yumia to great-great-great grandmother Marie. Most of these recipes include alchemy at some step in their development. Making modern salmon taste the way an extinct Clearwater Golden Salmon was said to, for instance, or packing more fruit flavor into a slice of Philosopher's Pie than strictly speaking should be possible under known laws of physics. 

Of course, the teas are where Atelier Eliza shines. The staff of the tea shop - the Blanchimont Sisters included - have designed several unique tea and coffee blends that not only are extraordinarily delightful (I'm personally hooked on the Frozen Moon Chai) but can heighten emotional states, provide deep soothing relaxation, or otherwise carry the kind of secondary effect that a alchemical solution might. This, in itself, is not groundbreaking. Indeed, alchemical cooking abounds in Eorzea from places like The Spearsong Inn to The Bad End. Instead it is the science behind these drinks that's fascinating. 

The alchemy on display at Atelier Eliza could be characterized as traditional alchemy on Hyper. Drawing aether from crystals to catalyze a fairly standard chemical reaction is a common process in alchemy. More advanced is using aether in a transformational or creative capacity, as Hannish alchemy is well known to do. The alchemy in the kitchen of this unassuming teahouse manages to do all that, and something more besides. Wheat can be extended to create far more flour than simple milling could achieve. Fruits can be hybridized in the kitchen. I asked Eliza if she'd solved world hunger. She laughed.

"We can do this here for a few reasons. One of which being a lot of specialized equipment. We can do aetheric reductions here that would take a full laboratory in other places. Another part is, simply we know what we're doing. The kind of mathematics, minerology, engineering, aetherophysics, chemistry, and aetheology we do to make you a pie is built on generations of proprietary research. And so far we can't scale it up," she explained. "Ultimately, our kitchen is a testbed. We're putting ideas together that just kinda don't belong, we're applying crazy pressure to those ideas, and sometimes we get miracles. Sometimes we have to close for three moons for repair. But if the kind of principles we use here can be used to stretch grain in famines, or to feed refugees? That's the dream, isn't it?" 

Another incongruity embraced by the Atelier is its owner herself. Despite being on the forefront of a unique brand of alchemy, Eliza spends most of her time as a Priestess of Menphina. This religious blend renders her acutely aware of the need for the kinds of things her kitchen might be capable of. Regularly, Atelier Eliza delivers excess stock to food pantries around Eorzea, and the tea shop never charges, maintaining on the generational wealth of the Blanchimonts and the revenue from the various patents it has been producing. 

Normal operations are overseen by Abel, who admits that outside the people she blissfully calls 'the mad scientists', she is short-staffed. At present, Abel says the Atelier is recovering from one of those non-miracles Eliza mentioned, but they intend to be open on the 28th of the Sixth Astral Moon.