I heard about this phenomenon a couple of years ago. You get cold tea, often flavored with other stuff (e.g. strawberry syrup), and a layer of what looks like large frog eggs in the bottom of the cup. You drink it through a large straw so the “bubbles” can come up through the straw.
I had no opportunity to try it until a few months ago. Then a kiosk opened up in the mall near my house. I tried it. Meh. More odd than anything else - the “frog eggs” were just dark purple flavorless blobs. If they were sweet-tasting, it might have made more sense. It wasn’t awful, I just really didn’t see the point
A few weeks ago I tried it again just to be sure I wasn’t missing anything enjoyable. Again, meh. Though it was pretty funny when Typo Knig joined me and I offered him a taste. Since he didn’t know what it was, the expression on his face when he got a mouthful of blobs was memorable!
OK - so, why? Why take a pleasant enough beverage and add what looks like overgrown frog eggs? (yes, I know the balls are tapioca. What’s with that? I have a box of tapioca at home and it’s white…). Is this really that common in Asia? (honestly, I forget what country I read it originated in, and I didn’t think it would be polite to ask).
I’ve wondered the same thing. They’re like fisheyes. I can see trying it once for novelty’s sake, but I can’t see trying it twice. Which makes it impossible for me to understand why there’s any market for it at all.
I love bubble tea! The creamy fruitiness, combined with the chewy tapioca balls, makes the perfect hot-weather refreshing drink. Plus, the sugar rush is the closest you can get legally to a pixie-stick-solution IV drip.
Many are served with other jelly flavor options also, like mint, vanilla, and lychee jellies. The fun is in coming up with weird custom flavor concoctions.
Bubble tea is wonderful! I usually skip the super sweet concoctions and the slushies, instead going for a nice Thai tea with tapioca in the bottom. Tapioca balls are definately an aquired taste. They don’t have much flavor besides a light sweetness, to tell you the truth, more of a consistency. You have to find good tapioca balls, when they are too cold or too warm they taste absolutely horrible.
One of the reasons I like having bubble tea with thai tea is that the thai tea is strong enough that it tends to ‘stick’ on the tapioca balls after a few minutes, giving them more flavor. The syrupy drinks and smoothies never did that.
From what I have seen, bubble tea is popular with the college crowd and a bunch of local police officers. At the 24 hr starbucks the police glare at you, here they are nicer and will chat with you while they enjoy their drinks. Also, the place I usually go to has wireless internet, comfy chairs, and a bunch of board games. Thats why the college crowd is usually there. The other tapioca place I know of has a bunch of computers hooked up together for gaming, wireless internet, and other various game-related stuffs. That one has more of the high school boy crowd, and MUCH sweeter drinks than any other I have ever had.
I think it’s the texture of the tapioca balls, in combination with whatever drink you like, that’s the attraction. Me, I adore passion fruit slushies with tapioca balls that a local Vietnamese place makes. The sharp tang of the fruit slush, the sugar cane juice, and the chewy-chewy balls is an addictive combination. However, those tapioca balls are filling - one drink almost makes a complete meal.
I like it too. It’s fun! The “tea” tastes good, and the tapioca beads are chewey. What’s wrong with that? I wish there were a bubble tea place around here. Maybe I should talk to my local coffee shop about it…
(PS–I think it’s from Taiwan, but I could be wrong.)
I’m okay with boba tea (never heard the term “bubble” before), and my wife loves 'em. The tapioca balls are yummy, and the tea is just sweet enough to be teasing.
I’m also wondering if the franchise near you knows how to make good boba…
Count me in as a huge bubble/boba tea fan. I was in law school when the first boba place opened in Gainesville, Florida in 2003, and I introduced as many people as I could to the sweet concoctions. About half of them got addicted, and the other half thought the tapioca balls (I call them “bobos”) were gross. But Bento Cafe made great ones in plastic cups decorated with anime characters, and they had a neat machine that heat-sealed cellophane lids over the cups, to puncture with the huge colorful straws. They were lots of fun.
Now that I live in Orlando, we are lucky to have a large Vietnamese neighborhood with many restaurants, markets, and shops. We have a tiny bubble tea store, Lollicup, which is apparently a chain that is huge in California and popping up elsewhere. They’re very good, but my favorite bubble teas are at my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Little Saigon. They make them more like slushies, very sweet and delicious although I wonder if they contain any actual tea. Their taro is very vanilla-ey and sweet, and the other flavors like pineapple and almond are great too. Eventually I’ll try every single one. Finally, we have a swanky sake bar in classy Winter Park, Tatame, that also features bubble teas. Theirs are decent, but tend to get that watered-down taste by the time you make it down to the bottom. They also aren’t as sweet as some others I’ve had.
BBVL, I think these these tapioca-ball drinks started out as tea and tea mixtures, which were shaken vigorously with crushed ice until bubbly (this is where the term “bubble tea” came from), but the concept of tapioca balls in a drink expanded to include fruit slushies, coffee, and you-name-it. Yes, I think the Vietnamese have perfected the art. There’s a big Vietnamese mall near me, and the whole food court is composed of fascinating little snack stands, each dealing in a particular specialty. The drinks stand displays piles of fresh fruits, such as pineapples, durians, mangoes, oranges, coconuts, and key limes. They also have a device that looks like a laundry mangle, and it is for the purpose of crushing and squeezing fresh sugar cane stalks. The fresh fruit is squeezed or pureed on the spot, and then they use the fresh sugar cane juice to sweeten the fruit drinks.
I am jealous of your mall, although we do have a nice pan-Asian supermarket the size of a Publix (the big Florida supermarket chain). I just get intimidated walking around the store, wanting to try and sample so many things, but not being able to read labels or know what these foods taste like, or how to cook with them, or what they’re used for. The staff is typically very nice, but hardly anyone speaks much English so the mysteries remain.
But being from Miami, I’m familiar with the sugar cane squeezers. A lot of Cuban restaurants and cafeterias have them down there, where fresh sugar cane juice is a refreshing treat called guarapo, and the key ingredient to mixing a perfect mojito.
There are a few places in my area offering it, but I find making my own at home to be much better. Iced drink, still slightly warm tapioca pearls… a good contrast in texture, taste, and temperatures. I also like them in hot drinks.
I guess the attraction to me is the texture of the pearls (I also like to eat mochi), the constrasts between the pearls and the drink, and the satisfying ‘thunk’ you get when you slorp up a pearl with the straw.
When I make it at home, I drop about a handful of 'em into a bowl, cover them with at least an inch of water, then nuke for seven minutes. (Warning: do this only with the type that can be microwaved like this, lest you end up with tapioca soup!) Drain the water, stir them with a bit of sugar or honey, then add the ice and the drink.
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Calling it bubble tea comes from mishearing Boba, as a proprietor once told me.
I love bubble tea also. The tapioca balls do have a flavor, sweet and slightly flowery. I get the mango green tea with tapioca and it’s my favorite beverage. It’s actually more like a snack than just a drink. Yum.
Now, where does this originate? Is it pan-Asian or from a particular place? There are a quadrillion bubble-tea places in Vancouver-- I’d never seen it in the states before but apparently it’s made it widely.
