Bubble Tea
 

Bubble Tea

I had it when I was in Taipei, and needless to say I found it interesting, good, although the gummy balls in there caught me by surprise.

Well my wife saw "committed" on NBC where they showed it, and now she is craving it, and she has never had it :rolleyes: :p

Any national chains that offer it?

Learn to make it yourself

http://www.bubbleteasupply.com/index...e=recipes.html

(of course they will sell you the pearls, as will about a million other places on line)

In New York it's sold at a ton of delis, and locally outside the city we've seen it at chineese restaurants.

There's a Bubble Tea Cafe in Houston. Lots of places offer it around here, but I'm guessing Houston might be more convenient for you.

Also look for it being called "boba"

I am also a bubbletea addict !
 

I'm new to FT.. I've been browsing the forum for several days now..and this is my first post. I hope I can help.

I fly to Austin pretty often, and each time I always stopped at a bubbletea place called Coco's Cafe. They have good selection of flavors.

And in Houston, there are probably more than 20 places that sell this type of drink. Go to the new Chinatown ( Bellaire Blvd ), and you will find plenty of places. The one I usually go to is located in the Hongkong City Mall.

I've also tried bubbleteas in NYC, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Seattle, LV, LA, SF, and back home in Indonesia.
They're all good! ^

Btw it's also called "Pearl milk tea", "tapioca ball drink", "boba drink"

Here's some other locations that I found on the net:
http://www.geocities.com/kananelj/cafe.html

Locally in SoCal (Irvine), we have the Tea Station & Tapioca Express. My daughter is addicted, so I make that run once a week or so. I like boba green milk tea. You've got to be careful, though - I've had HORRIBLE bobas in NYC & from 2 places in Costa Mesa - if it's been sitting around & they don't have a high boba turnover, it can be mushy & wierd. Looking forward to Oahu next week where they do it really good with great flavors!

Welcome to FT!
Anyway, depends on what quality of "boba" you want-there is a national chain, mainly in California but also on east coast, called Lollicup, but I think their artificial powder and other ingredients aren't too good for you. Visit Chinatowns or busy pedestrian areas (such as near colleges) to find such places. Sometimes they can be found in tea places (like in Boston & Cambridge there are a lot) or with smoothie stores.

All around NYC
 

Tons of places in NYC, both within Chinatown, and outside of it... Some good coffee places (GOOD, so not Starbucks) have it in the city, as well.

It IS good, isn't it? Had it in Thailand for the first time - fell in love with it.

Methinks the non-Texans do not realize that Las Vegas is actually closer to El Paso than Houston, TX is... in any case, I'll chime in with there are a bunch of them in Dallas ;), pretty much any Asian-owned coffeehouse will have it.

You are right ;)

ELP-LAS 730 miles
ELP-IAH 760 miles

I gotta take my wife somewhere they sell it, so she can try it

Guilty as charged. :) But I was right in saying that Houston is closer to El Paso than the San Francisco Bay Area is.

You can easily find Boba Tea in Vietnamese neighborhoods in Orange County, CA and in Northern Virginia.

A good place for BOBA in California
 

If you travel to CA very often or you live in CA, there is a place you might want to try out sometimes. The store name is call "Tea Station", they offer over 100 selection of ice/hot drinks. All drinks you can add BOBA into it. I try it once, they did it good. Tea Station totally having 8 stores in Northern and Southern CA, besides those 8, they have 1 store at Las Vegas call "Tea Planet". The friend who took me to the store told me, that Tea Station is the pioneer who introduce BoBa Milk Tea and all different kind tea drinks to CA even earlier then Lollipcup and Tapioca Express. I don't know if it is true thou??

Jfe,
I have a kit I can send to you. PM me an address, maybe you can send me some of that Mex Hot Choc or a bottle of Vanilla :D
Jon

You got PM :)

I'm addicted! Living in San Francisco Bay Area, I have no problem finding bubble tea/coffee shops. They're everywhere.

Most of my friends don't like it though. They say it tastes like rubber. :D

Bursa, I will visit Boston a lot in the coming months. Any specific place(s) that you can recommend? Thx.

bubble tea boston
 

In Boston, it is available at a number of places:

The best place to go is the tiny Juice Bar located on the second floor of a Chinese shopping complex at 44 Beach Street in Chinatown.

You can also go to May's Cafe (on Glenville Ave in Allston/Brighton) for very good bubble tea (standard milke tea), or you can goto the chains of Lollicup around Harvard Sq and in the Super 88 on Brighton Ave. There are also an Infusions Tea Spa and Cassava Bubble Tea Lounge and some others...

Thanks for the info!

I like the Lychee bits more than the pearls

Thanks for the kit, we made some yesterday and the wife really liked it :)

Hope you got the chocolate abuelita.

Tropioca in Midtown on Milam has a nice selection, lots of board games and free wi-fi to boot. A great place to hang out. Only problem is fighting the college kids for a table.

I know that the Pho 79 chain in Denver serves it, as well. My girlfriend is particularly addicted to the Taro root one.

Timothy

Opinions on bubble tea (Boba)
 

I had my first (and definitely last) taste of boba while in California this week. For those not familiar, it is tea, infused with milk that is served cold. So far, so good. And this portion of the drink I actually liked.

Now for the bad part. There are slimy tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup. (In this case, they were chocolate tapioca balls).You use a really wide straw, and these nasty things end up in your mouth. The entire time, I thought a) I do not have a cold....and b) I'm about to barf.

Finally, I could take no more of this calamity.....and vowed never to drink this again.
Does anyone out there like this?

Boba shops have sprung up all over Southern CA the last couple or so years.

I had no idea what they were selling or what Boba was until I read your thread.

Don't believe I'll make my first visit anytime soon. :)

I know it as Milk Tea with pearls (or tapioca, but they are not usually chocolate). Here it Texas it is usually sold at Chinese restaurants and other places.
First tried it in Taiwan, and have loved it every since.

There's a few around here, I personally like them. Some flavors are better than others. And the balls are half the fun :) part drink, part yummy snack.

The tapioca balls are actually very tasty, but need to be freshly prepared. Shops with high turnover or dedicated boba drink places tend to be better for this. Once the tapioca balls get to be day old, they do develop a very slimy exterior.

Also, I'm not sure that chocolate tapioca makes a good flavor combination. I personally like the classic tea infused flavor--it matches the milk tea drink a lot better.

That said, everyone has different takes for texture/flavor. The tapioca balls should be a firmer, chewier version of agar agar or jello.

I luv bubble tea. I luv it so very much. The boba are just chewy bits of goodness in a sea of tasty tea. In fact, I think I'll get some this afternoon!

I like 'em. My local pho place offers bubble shakes - the mango is delicious.

Boba!
 

Boba is awesome when made well and nasty if in the wrong hands. The pearls should never have a film of slime. They should be chewy and slightly sweet with a nice "bite!" The best boba is in Taiwan, of course, but some great places in California too. My favorites in the Bay area are Sweetheart Cafe in Oakland and Berkeley - try their regular, green tea boba, or even a taro shake boba; and Fantasia in Mountain View. These are great on a hot day and you will walk into a place and see a wall of different flavor bobas to choose from. Sweetheart even makes hot boba drinks too. I love the hot taro boba from there because they use real taro and not a syrup. Be careful of places that use packaged flavorings instead of real juices, teas, or chunks of fruit.

In Taiwan, they put all sorts of things in these drinks other than just pearls. Even a pudding or custard milk tea. Sounds weird? yeah, it kinda is...

It's not milk in a lot of cases but non-dairy creamer. After all if a large percentage of your target audience is lactose intolerant would you be using dairy? Taro flavor is probably my favorite although the color can be somewhat alarming to inexperienced individuals.

I'm not sure how the OP ended up with chocolate boba as that usually requires a special request vs. ending up with the standard variety which is really mostly tasteless.

Oh well, more for the rest of us! :D

Love it.

In BKK go to the basement of Paragon to the food court and see tea loaded with all kinds of yummy stuff.

You can also fire the pearls from a straw, makes for a tasty spitwad.

Well, I may stand to be corrected here.

Everybody but the OP seems to be a fan of Boba.

And some appear to be rabid fans.

I get the message about making sure you visit the right places.

Now I just need to figure out where the right place is located (TPE is out of the question for now :) ) and I might have to break down and try one.

:D:D:D

Never thought of that, but you're right.

I love the bobas I've had, though I'll confess almost all have been powder-based. In fact I found out where to buy the powder and boba online and did so but can't get them to taste the same (guess it's all in the blender). My favorites are green tea, chai tea, and some hawaiian one (might be the previously-mentioned taro).

If you ever stop up in Anchorage, Alaska, head over to the mall downtown and on the food court level (4th floor IIRC), there's a place called Fruitland. Great boba teas (most are powder-based) - I always stop there as soon as I can after arriving and it's always one of the last stops I make before I leave. Love the stuff!

I was actually sitting in a conference room when the host of the meeting came in with the Boba. She placed the order...thus the chocolate.
It looks like I had a poorly prepared batch. The pearls were extremely slimy...which I have now learned is not normal. (Hey, I'm a guy that can eat boiled okra....so I know my slime !!!:))
I loved the liquid part of the drink...it was just the pearls that I didn't agree with.

My assessment of bubble tea? Don't buy it in the United States

I visit my parents in Taipei now and then and always buy some there. A nice tall cup of it costs the equivalent of $1.02. That's right you heard right, a little over a buck.

Last I checked in my local mall in the RIC, bubble tea was hitting about $4.50. And it's not even that good.

In Taiwan I usually pay NT$25 for my boba nai cha. I love it!

Actually, there are quite a few places in the SF Bay area that sell the 16 oz size for ~$1. Unfortunately, the one that I liked raised the price to $2.50 unless you also purchased a lunch box from them. I've definitely have had boba tea here roughly equivalent to that found in Taiwan (except it can be up to 4x as expensive...). I bet LA and other cities with big Asian populations (RIC probably doesn't count ;)) also would have decent boba tea purveyors as well.

You'd Got the WRONG Pearls/Boba/Tapioca Balls!
 

If you would, please listen to this Taiwanese here, you had the wrong pearls from the wrong shop. I've never heard of chocolate pearls myself.

As a general priniciple, these bubble tea pearls are made of tapioca. After cooked through in boiling water, they are coated in sugary water or syrup (hence the sweet taste). They are flavorless by themselves. Authentic pearls are fresh and very chewy. (a little bit like gummy bear candy, if you would, but much tastier). The flavors come from the drinks. Thus, you can have a variety of tea, coffee or juices that go with pearls when you order it.

It's still under debate whether the bubble drinks originated from Taiwan or Hong Kong. What I do know is years back, when the bubble drinks got so popular in Taiwan, they were imported and franchized to North America. So it's not surprising to find those boca places, such as CA or Toronto nowadays.

Americans are not that used to hot drinks with pearls. In Taiwan, pearls are served in cold drinks or shaving ice during summer and served hot in wintertime. For those who do have a sweet tooth, put Taiwan into one of your future MRs. You can miss all the other part of the world but not Taiwan. Great food & great people!! Of course, I am biased! ;)

If you need to get a quick bubble fix before heading for Taiwan, my advice is to have it at the stores with Taiwanese owners, or where they serve authentic Taiwanese food. I heard some Vietnamese places have good pearls drinks too. Just don't try it at any Boba store, or you would probably end it up like our poor phillygold with bad taste (of pearls) in the mouth. :p

Bleh...
 

I've never liked the bubble (boba/tapioca/whatever) tea. Yes...I'm Chinese-American..:rolleyes:

I often go to these places with my Asian friends to hang out, and they keep getting me to try different boba drinks. My friends have taken me to Lollicup as well as smaller chains and independent places in LA and Orange County, but I've just never really liked this drink. Like phillygold, I find the teas themselves fairly good, but the tapoica balls pretty gross.

I never go to these places unles my friends want to go, but I'll just order the tea without the tapoica balls.