The Grand White Rabbit Tea Co. brings Australian hand pies, crafted teas to Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — A marriage of Down Under and Far East is setting up shop in the Midwest.

Now in Cedar Rapids, you don’t have to jet over the earth’s curvature to take advantage of an unusual duo. The Grand White Rabbit Tea Co., opened last month at Lindale Mall, is a new tea and hand pie concept offering qualities meant to be savored.

With a pairing of ceremonial grade tea and an Aussie sensibility, a Des Moines pie maker is branching to Eastern Iowa under the new restaurant brand.

“We’re leveraging the Japanese respect for purity with Australian cafes and their ability to have fun with things,” said co-owner Summer Stevens. “Being an American based business, we couldn’t be too stuffy. But I wanted, with all the ingredients, to be as respectful as I could.”

How it started

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Stevens, an Iowa native, moved to Australia in 2010 after marrying an Australian. There, she became acquainted with the culture of “pints and pies.”

After more than 10 years living abroad, her entry into the restaurant industry was with a North American type of food: Mexican.

“I couldn’t get my favorite food, and it was driving me crazy,” she said.

Her first opening, complete with a chef brought from overseas, was later sold when her family moved back to the United States. In 2022, they returned to Iowa to be near Stevens’ ailing father.

Pie Mates Australian Bakehouse, started in 2022 with a mobile kitchen, tested the Australian pie concept in Iowa on an ad hoc basis before moving into a more permanent home at St. Kilda Collective in West Des Moines.

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Branching out

Now, with business partner Betty Barcelo, she is starting a new arm with two pilot locations in Cedar Rapids and Fredericksburg, Virginia.

The new Grand White Tea Company serves the same pies made in Pie Mates’ West Des Moines kitchen. Barcelo’s expertise, as the former owner of a private label tortilla company that supplied Fareway stores across the state, comes in handy for the logistics.

Hand pies are served hot on-site, but are available frozen for those who want to take them home and bake them later. In addition to the Grand White Rabbit, the hand pies will be available in Hy-Vee’s frozen aisle, starting with one store in Waukee before branching out statewide.

Eventually, she envisions the brand expanding with locations across the country.

But as a new brand, the Grand White Rabbit is about more than hand pies. Together, the business partners wanted to add high-quality teas to the mix, creating a place to treat yourself with a splurge that’s still within reach.

Quality ingredients on the menu

They didn’t want their menu to look like another trendy boba tea shop popping up in cities everywhere.

“We wanted to take culinary ingredients to another level and didn’t take short cuts with those ingredients,” Stevens said. “That’s not easy with this price point, but I’m a strong believer that if you present quality to people, once they taste the difference, you’ll keep them as a customer.”

While some boba tea shops use milk-hydrated powders and high-fructose corn syrups, they aim to be a few notches above industry standards.

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Matcha in their teas is ceremonial grade — the first young leaves of a harvest weighing in at a whopping $156 per pound. Black oolong and green tea is single origin and organic. Other ingredients, down to the fruits mixed in, align with a clean ethos that health-conscious customers can feel good about.

They expect tea consumers to be the primary core of their target audience.

“Shortcutting on quality has never been an option for us,” Stevens said. “We wanted to taste the difference.”

For the uninitiated, there’s no need for silverware with their hand pies. Similar to a British pasty, Stevens explains the concept as “Australia’s version of the pot pie.”

But unlike their British cousins, the culinary staple in Australia and New Zealand has continued to evolve over the years with fusions of traditional and Asian cuisines in a melting pot culture similar to the United States.

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Hand pies in Australia run the gamut, from gas station to gourmet varieties. While British pies use a hot water crust that can be tougher, the Aussie style uses a short crust pastry on the bottom and a puff pastry on top — balancing durability with a tender, flaky crust.

“They have engineered their short crust pastry for the purpose of their most beloved (plate),” Stevens said. “With fillings, they take a lot of luxuries, and there’s stuff that stemmed from (nearby) cultures. Butter chicken, chicken tikka masala, Malaysian flavors — it runs the gamut.”

In Cedar Rapids, the menu includes comfort flavors like roasted pork and thyme, chuck steak with peppercorn gravy and caramelized onions, beef and gravy, and quiche Lorraine. The menu also includes options for more adventurous palates like the Korean inspired gochujang chicken with mushroom and bacon or the barbecue beef with aged cheddar and jalapenos.

For those with a sweet tooth, the menu is slightly more curated: a choice between bourbon pecan pie or spiced apple crumble.

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Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.

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