Summit Spice & Tea

If you’re looking for some great loose leaf teas, then Summit Spice & Tea is definitely for you. They have a variety of different black, white, green, oolong, chai, rooibos, mate & herbal teas! If you’re looking for a good selection of rooibos & mate teas they have some great blends. Banana Nut Mate is my favorite of the mate teas. You can also blends the rooibos teas to make some delicious combinations. A great caffeine free alternative, for example, to Earl Grey De La Crème would be to mix Rooibos Vanilla w/​Rooibos Earl Grey.

I love this place! The sales people are always so friendly when we walk in the door. The company offers informational classes for customers to learn about chocolates, balsamic vinaigrettes, etc. and it adds an extra element to their business. I love the fact that they have the tea room, where you can sample the teas that they have and enjoy the relaxing atmosphere. Absolutely one of the hidden gems of the Anchorage coffee/​tea scene.

Summit Spice offers local access to a wide variety of teas, spices, chocolate, and a nice variety of gourmet accoutrement and condiments. Prices range from low to high, depending. Tea, generally affordable. Luxury cooking items like imported balsamic vinegar are higher.
They also offer every tea accessory you might want, from infuser balls to teapots and mugs, in a variety of styles to suit different tastes.
I really like the staff, who are knowledgable, energetic, and friendly. Don’t know what you want? They’ll offer you recommendations. Don’t know what you like? They’ll offer tasters.
They usually have ready tasters every day showcasing different teas, which I like because it forces me out of me out of my green/​earl gray/​mint ruts.
The setup is nicely organized, the décor eclectic, bright, and enticing. The attached tea room is a good place for working or reading, though the kitchen table and uncushioned seating isn’t conducive to much lounging. They always have good music at a good level – somehow, they even make punk-​pop classics seem like appropriate tea room fare, a nice change from the electronic lounge other places have (which I also enjoy).
Now that I’ve discovered I enjoy the work vibes there, I’ll be trading my kitchen table for on one theirs more regularly.

The good: I love their samples. On my most recent visit, today, there were fewer than normal which was disappointing. They also have a wide selection of spices and fun oil and chocolate varieties.
The bad: their customer service, which was never super quick, has rolled downhill right into ‘just bad’. I waited for four minutes at the cash register, made eye contact with the clerk who I knew saw me, yet rather than direct another employee over to handle the sale, he kept talking about cinnamons to another person while customers lined up behind me. I ended up leaving as they clearly don’t need my business badly enough to make time to, you know, scan my card and sell me something.

During a recent visit with family, we stopped in to buy some goodies. Nice store, sort of bland décor, but we found some great, interesting food yummies! What we didn’t find was a very warm welcome, in fact no one even acknowledged us, even during our check out transaction, both woman working there never said, hello, can I help you find anything, nor did they say thank you, see you soon, they just didn’t say anything. CHILLY, to say the least. yikes.

I went in recently with my significant other and a group of friends to get tea and snacks. While the drinks and food were excellent, the customer service was not. The young lady attending the counter made it clear that she was annoyed at having to help us, and seemed in a hurry to get us away from the counter.
The products were great, but an excellent/​poor experience with staff can make all the difference as to whether or not I’ll come in again.

I love this place. I’m an undergrad student in the states and I always make sure to bring enough tea to last me each semester. Last semester I brought down a pound of the Earl Grey Crème, and my boyfriend and I are down to the last oz. My mom loves the Lady Grey tea, my brother, the Nirvana and Coconut Chais, and my sister the Almond. I also highly recommend both the Carnival Matte tea and their new Banana Bread tea if you are interested in dessert teas. Absolutely divine!

I can’t say enough wonderful things about this locally owned tea and spice place! But, it’s not just tea and spice, so don’t be fooled! Here you can buy olive oils, vinegars, jams, specialty chocolate, salsas, yummy mustard’s, Spanish olives… and so much more. On «buy local» — the day after Black Friday — they will gift wrap any of your purchases for free in sturdy, decorated boxes. On any other given day, they often have samplers out. This is the ONLY place I purchase my spices. You can get your general gamut of spices, but they have so many other types of things that you won’t find in your typical grocery store LIKE: ground chipotle/​ancho, truffle salt, dried ghost peppers… and it all tastes so fresh!
One thing I particularly love about this place is that you can buy spices by the ounce. No committing to an entire bottle if you don’t want to.
When the shop ran out of my favorite olive oil, they put me on a call list and called me two weekends in a row to let me know that although my exact olive oil wasn’t in, its flavored counterpart was. I mean, that right there is amazing customer service.
Love ya’ll

Heaven.
If you are looking for tea, spices or fun food items, you have to stop at Summit Spice & Tea Co. From normal to rare, Summit has it all.

I cannot say enough good things about this place. Love all the options and we buy all of our spices/​teas here. Fresh and last forever, it’s super cheap to refill your own container. Staff is always friendly and helpful. We have been customers forever, going back years at the huffman store and I cannot say that I have had one bad experience. Shop local!

This is the best place to buy tea and spices in town, hands down. I really enjoy sitting in their cozy café space when it’s cold outside, enjoying a mix of vanilla and cinnamon rooibos. I live out of state now, and waited until I came home for a visit to stock up on teas and spices.
The only thing I’d change is that they need to take down their Christmas decorations immediately after Christmas. Alright, this year they took down the ornaments, but they’ve had the same fake pine garland up for like, two years. It’s obviously a Christmas decoration, even if it doesn’t have any ornaments on it. That needs to GO by New Years!

The store has a spacious layout, and there were several little tasting stations with crackers so that you could try sauces. (As a marketing strategy, that worked! I bought a bottle of some Balsamic and Roasted Garlic Mustard I wouldn’t have looked at twice on the shelf). I saw a good selection of sauces and jellies, teas, and spices. The chocolate section was respectable, but less comprehensive. Yes, some of the products were expensive, but this is a foodie’s store. You are going to have to pay higher prices for fancier goods. My favorite thing about the store was that they offered «Just a pinch» spice packets (about enough for seasoning one meal for 3 – 4). I bought four, and they were each under $ 2. This way, I will get to try them before buying the $ 8-​$ 10 bottle.

Stopped in for my first time a few weeks ago for a pot of tea with a friend. WOW! The tea was wonderful and the place is about as cute as it can be. Retail side has loads of fun spices, dips, sauces, teas and chocolates along with teapots, cups and other accessories. I think this would be a perfect first date place. Low commitment and inexpensive. Friendly staff.

I would say the service was top notch and helpful, but I really like to market spice at Indigo Tea Company. 8oz is about $ 18 there. Stopped here to find something new and chose the Orange Spice and the Nirvana Chai based on smell and opinion of the staff. The little sticker placed on the bag was helpful in that it showed the steep time per type. I’ve tried them both multiple times at work and found them rather bland to their smell. Darn. Guess I’ll go back to Indigo for more Market Spice. A comrade in tea consumption went with me and got the Orange something or other and was completely happy, though he was already a fan and knew what he was getting into.
Still the store is great, prices reasonable, so I’ll be back to try a new tea, or to buy a new steeping gadget.

When Summit Spice was a tiny little spice shop on Huffman Road it was awesome. but now that they’ve more than tripled their size in their new location off of Benson (plus added a tea room). I think they are reallllllllly awesome!
A reminder to locals who enjoy Summit’s incredible spices: Don’t forget to either bring in your own container for them to fill, or just have them put the spices you want in their little zip-​lock baggies until you can get them home & place them in their bottles. Sure saves money. :0)
I agree that their gourmet sauces, jams, and chocolates are pricey, but the spices are equivalent to any fine spice shop in the lower-​48. I love the home blends they come up with, especially «Eureka» which is incredible in pizza dough & Italian dishes! Fun classes and tasting events there too.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!! I’m am SO gloriously happy that I found Summit; this place is a foodie’s dream. They have an endless supply of fabulous loose leaf teas and spices from the world over. Since I moved to Alaska, I feel as though I’m living in a culinary wildnerness. After 3 decades of easy access to the fine multicultural markets in Philadelphia, the transition to Alaska has been rough for me.
When I walked into Summit, I realized that perhaps there is yet hope for my weary taste buds. Summit rivals any store in NY, Philly or DC for it’s selection of tea and spice. They have a nice smattering of olive oil, vinegar and fine chocolate. They also have some nifty tea ecoutrements. What’s even cooler about Summit is they have tasting classes that are very reasonably prices. I highly suggest signing up for their email list so you can get the skinny on all their classes. Serious coolness!

My favorite things:
melon pear white tea
coconut green tea
unalaska spice
rosemary blend (can’t remember the name)

This is the kind of shop that any food lover could accidentally spend an hour in. There’s chocolate, candies, jams, sauces, spices, chutneys, teas, hot cocoa, drink mixes, local treats, and more.
I wouldn’t say customer service is divine and the prices are high, but there are few merchandisers selling these products in Anchorage. For that, and for the great tea collection, they get 4 stars.

One of the few places I entrust to get my tea. Customer service friendliness level is spotty, but better more often than not. Their teas are pretty reasonably priced, and you get a discount if you buy in larger quantities. Every time I come here, I inevitably end up spending ten or twenty bucks on bags of tea, and my tea drawer is overflowing now.
They have lots of other tea knickknacks, spices, candies and stuff. Some of it is quite overpriced — their unbleached tea bags are more expensive than what I ended up ordering through Amazon. But I’ll always come here for my tea. There’s so many to choose from, I end up buying more than I end up getting through in between visits.

Summit Spice & Tea has opened a sister store in Midtown with a variety of goodies. They offer just about every spice you can think of, including their own blends, as well as specialty chocolates and tea blends. The smallest packet of tea goes for $ 7, so I’m not totally sold on them yet, but am interested in partaking one of their «tea tastings.» There was also several specialty food items, such as olive oil, balsamic vinegars, chutneys, marmalade, jams and lemon curd. Interestingly enough, they offer gourmet popcorn seeds that explode into colors like red and black; and, they have seasonings for popcorn as well, of course.
Most importantly, they offer Tonia’s biscotti, which is my favorite locally-​made confection. I wish they stocked the «minis», but they mainly sell the larger ones.