Bubble Tea

One thing that sets East Asian tea apart from almost all other tea movements is its push to invoke as many of the senses as possible. Taste and smell are pretty obvious, but those are also ubiquitous. Taiwanese tea-brewers, for example, go one step further; their tea activates your senses of sight and touch, and it’s them we have to thank for the amazingness that is Bubble Tea.

I was first introduced to Bubble Tea, or Boba tea, at Silk Road Café, situated in the Mattin Center of the Johns Hopkins Campus. While I have nothing but good things to say about their mango smoothies, and their Chinese food is supposedly more authentic than say, Panda Express, I cannot defend their lychee-flavored bubble tea. If you aren’t familiar with it (shame on you!), bubble tea consists of either a black tea or fruit tea base and has “bubbles” (tapioca balls) in it. Some stories attribute its creation to a single tea stand in Taiwan where children would be fascinated by actual bubbles in the tea. Before long, tea-brewers had thought up ways to recreate the bubble effect, and one successful variation used tapioca. After your tea is brewed, flavored, and iced, it’s put through a sealing machine; instead of a cup lid for a soda cup (which your drink can still spill through if it tips over), you get a completely sealed cup that you can pierce with a straw. The straw, by the way, is extra wide so that you can consume the tea and the bubbles together. In Asia bubble tea is almost always milk-based and is usually known as “pearl milk tea,” with the tapioca balls called “pearls” in a charming twist. The lychee-flavored variety at Silk Road was not milk-based, and the lychee taste was close enough to the tapioca taste that I felt like I was drinking and eating the same thing. That turned me off the stuff for a while.

Peach milk tea (sans bubbles)
at a place outside the Silk Market
in Beijing.

When I visited my brother for a week one summer in Richmond, he finally convinced me to try a Thai-iced-tea flavor and a Taro flavor. I love Thai iced tea, so that one was immediately a victory. And at the time I had no idea what taro was (an Asian dessert potato), but the drink was a lovely purple color and that was enough for me to want to try it (which I did, and it was awesome).  Since then, I’ve been excited enough about the stuff to search for it everywhere and get it I whenever I can. I even went back to Silk Road to try their Thai-iced-tea-flavor—better than the lychee because it’s milk-based, but still not the good stuff.

I was eager to get this stuff as much as possible when I was in Beijing, and indeed I did. My first was a “green bean” flavor at a place in Houhai, one of the many Beijing bar districts. Despite their green-pea-like appearance, Chinese green beans are actually dessert beans, so don’t be alarmed if you see a picture of a pea pod on an ice cream wrapper or pastry item. Also, they are delicious—one of the best flavors I’ve had.

After some searching for a tea place with bubbles (a lot of places just have bubble-less milk tea), we found a spot called “Color Tea” near Tsinghua University in the Wudaokou district. They soon hooked us with their compelling slogan (“Drink Tea”) and their rewards card (“Buy six drinks, get one free!”), and it became our regular haunt. I tried the Taro—really, really good—and the also impressive hazelnut flavor, but I missed some of the more unusual flavors on the menu, like Irish coffee. Still managed to fill up a whole rewards card though!

Color Tea's clever business strategy--a rewards card.

Cheese tea!

For my last weekend I helped Kelsey fill out her rewards card because she was there for a week after I left, and I decided to try something crazy (go big or go home, right?). Scoping out the menu, I found the craziest thing on it and went with it. It was “Cheese Tea.” The tea itself wasn’t milk-based, but it was remarkably similar to bubble tea. The barista put a few dollops of something that looked like pudding or soft tofu (the cheese!) into the cup before filling it with a chilled black tea, and gave me an extra wide straw with it. The bits of cheese did come out in bubble-like bits through the straw and did taste a bit like pudding. I wasn’t able to finish the cheese (he put quite a bit in, and the flavor takes some getting used to), but I did have all the tea. It really wasn’t bad, and it definitely wasn't as gross as I originally thought it sounded. A good breakfast snack and certainly one that comes with a unique taste, smell, look, and texture―pair it with a toasted bagel, but leave off the cream cheese because this drink's got that department covered!