Our staff family has hit a rough patch. We promise to be back soon to serve you the best afternoon tea and fiery North African stews you can get your hands on in Ljubljana. Until then, we hope you’ll patronize our neighboring coffee house and restaurants and hold your loved ones tight.

We know. It’s the wearing o’ the green and suddenly everyone in the U.S., and more inexplicably, half of Slovenia becomes Irish for a day.

Don’t get me wrong, we have St. Patrick’s Day specials for afternoon tea. Including a chocolate Guinness cake and Twinnings Irish Breakfast tea. We also have some St. Gertrude day specials including Ivanka’s cat cupcakes and shortbread cookies. We’ll totally understand if you want to go hang out at the cat cafe instead though.

Happy Pust! While the kurentovanje are busy scaring away the dregs of this cold, snowy winter, we’ll have hot pretzels and krofi through Shrove Tuesday.

Jo’s on sabbatical for a bit, but our new head baker, Ivanka, is killing it in the kitchen and Fred can always be counted on for his fabulous soups that have their own power to chase away the cold and gray. Check the chalkboard outside when you get here or ask us. Fred’s whims are too unpredictable to add them to the menu.

We’re also defying the weather with outdoor heaters so you can sit in the courtyard to enjoy your tea and whatev. Still no smoking, because the courtyard is small.

And finally, open mics are back with the first official day of spring. Give me – Vesna – a shout if you or your band would like to sign up. We’re bringing Liar’s Knot back to kick things off and since they are in the studio, they’ve agreed to a series of dates through the end of the summer.

We’re closing early to celebrate. Swing by before 21:00 if you want to grab a cup of tea and a snack. And don’t say happy birthday to Jo. She just hates that.

(Those fab cups are available from Miss Havisham’s Curiosities.)

We hope you and yours find light in the darkness.

Thank you for all the kind words and flowers that have shown up at the shop. Losing a member of our Renegade Tea family has been hard on us and knowing our community is there and will be there when we reopen means the world to us.

We thought we should probably contribute. We will not be dressing up like gladiators but if you want to wear a toga, hey, it’s a free country, our shop especially so.

We will be running a few tea specials. Fred has been deep in the books to find something from the Roman period people might actually want to eat. Right now it looks like Roman cheese cake with honey and pine nuts but we’ll add more stuff soon.

Not exactly Roman, but we’ve booked local punk band Liar’s Knot for a fundraising gig for the pro bono clinic a few of our regulars are working on. Posters up at the shop soon with a date and time.

If you’d like to donate to the clinic before or after the show, you can send them money via mail at:

Hiša dobrot, Vipavska cesta 104, 5000 Nova Gorica, Slovenia

Or by bank draft at:

SWIFT: BAKOSI2X SI56101000053803567, Refrerence: CHAR Banka Intesa Sanpaolo d. d., Pristaniška ulica 14, 6502 Koper, Slovenia

We’re looking for poets, writers, musicians, jugglers, whatever, for our open mic nights. Okay, maybe not whatever. The shop is small, so fire breathers and lion tamers will need to take that elsewhere.  First and third Thursdays of the month. Come by the shop and see me, Jo, if you’d like to sign up for a slot. We don’t provide a PA system, so if you want to blow the remaining paint off the walls, you’ll have to bring your own kit.

On a completely different note, we have a line of new green teas at the shop. Lots of people requested them and I even ordered some Japanese cast-iron cups to serve them in. My favorite so far is a sencha with toasted rice. We’re running some dim sum specials with the full “afternoon” tea served before 8 p.m (or until we run out).

Hello Renegades! This is Vesna taking on some social media and blogging duties for Jo.

If you haven’t been in for a while you should come by and check out our new mural done by local graffiti artist Igor. It’s inspired by the Boston Tea Party and the Great Wave of Kanagawa.

To celebrate a new year and the changes here at Renegade Tea, each week in January we’ll have a green tea and bento special happy hour from 4 – 6 pm. Frédéric is outdoing himself, so don’t miss out.

Local punk band Liar’s Knot will be in house every Friday evening in January to promote their latest Tempest, available for sale at the counter. We’ll bring back some open mic nights in February and March and we are always looking for musicians and writers to fill out our performance schedule.