Or nagashi somen, which seems like a culinary hygienist’s worst nightmare to me.
According to the wiki article, they were owned by a driving school for 22 years, which seems like one of the strangest business mash-ups you can find outside of Japanese conglomerates like Yamaha that are in the grand piano/synthesizer/motorcycle business, or Hitachi with its tank/nuclear reactor/vibrator catalogue.
I grew up in Iowa and going to Maid-Rite was an occasional treat. Now that I’m in the UK I use this recipe to make them.
Good call! Three years ago I had never seen the term and had no idea how it was pronounced. Now they are everywhere. Likewise (in the UK at least) Bubble Tea came out of nowhere and in the last two years has spread like crazy. Never had one, description leaves me much worse than just cold. My suspicion is that it’s a conspiracy to make tea sellable to the young. Evidence please, you say? OK, how about this: Brighton (on the coast, due south of London) is a city of just over a quarter million population, and notably young and hip. According to Google maps, there are 16 Bubble Tea establishments. Not bad from a standing start, eh? (But the cynic in me wonders how many will be left in five, or even three years.)
The growth of Dosa outlets (also from a standing start, and in, it seems, no more than a couple of years) has also been notable. But I’m not complaining about that one, because I like 'em.
j
Singaporean kaya toast chains are another niche one I’ve recently encountered. Wonder if those could ever make it elsewhere.
Wasn’t that a thing from ca. 15 years ago? At least I remember so from Germany, and that it was a very short trend.
Rapper Eminem opened a restaurant in Detroit called “Mom’s Spaghetti”. All they serve is spaghetti with sauce out of a jar, with or without meatballs, and spaghetti sandwiches.
You’re discounting the possibility that they have the best possible eggrolls in the city.
There’s one place like that here. It’s well-known to have “the best eggrolls in the city” (I’ve never tried them, but I’ve heard this all over the place). Every year, they have a few “Half-price egg roll” days, and they’re actually pretty big events, people lining up for hours to get their egg rolls.
I’m in the midwestern U.S., and though Wikipedia says that bubble/boba tea has been in the U.S. for decades, it seems like it’s only in the past few years where it became widespread and broadly popular. I’d not ever heard of it until a few years ago.
Interesting. Perhaps it’s like one of those diseases that’s always there at a really low background level, but you get localized epidemics from time to time. 
j
I just looked at another message board, and there’s a mention bubble tea finally coming to Switzerland in December 2011. The OP even mentions that bubble tea is already popular in the US and England. The link to the cafe in Zurich is dead, so it’s probably past its peak. Funnily enough there’s a live link to a chain in the UK. Bubbleology.
There are still 2 places in Luzern which are dedicated to bubble tea, so someone’s ordering bubble tea.
And Switzerland’s usually slow to adapt. We got cupcake-centric coffee shops long after the trend peaked in the US.
I just consulted with a Young Person who tells me that, whilst there were some bubble tea establishments ten or more years ago, it’s only since the pandemic that they really took off; and “They’re everywhere in London now”.
j
I remember visiting Toronto in 2004 and our hosts children (ages 14 & 17) were excited about this bubble tea thing that we didn’t know about.
And the parents were complaining that the kids were spending money like water on these “overpriced liquid candies”
So it was a thing twenty years ago, but you had to go to the Chinese shopping malls or neighborhoods to get it.
ETA: Things that make you feel old. Those kids are now both doctors and have their own kids to complain about!
The latter could be a problem. The reviews (Google and Yelp) seem to say it’s a pretty decent shop. The fact they only offer a very small handful of items is something I personally love, and I’d likely seek this place out were I in London anytime soon. I love places that have confidence in their product. There’s a goat place around me that sells two items: Birria (a goat type of stew from Jalisco and other areas of Mexico), and quesadillas with handmade corn torntillas. And stuff to drink. One of the best places in Chicago. Was written up in national media when it opened years ago, and it’s very much in a working class Mexican neighborhood, no hipster vibe to it whatsoever. They’re passionate about what they do, they know what they do well, and they do it. No need to offer tacos al pastor, tacos de lengua, tacos de Pollo, enchiladas, etc., when you just want to concentrate on one or two things.
Eons ago when my in-laws lived in Jacksonville, every time they had out-of-town guests, they’d drive to Deland (almost 2 hours) to cook their own pancakes. I never understood the appeal - maybe the batter and the toppings were really good. Maybe they were insane, I dunno - in the 18 years we lived in the Jax area, we never went ourselves.
Since bobba tea and cupcakes were mentioned, I’ll add Crumbl cookies. My 14-year-old granddaughter is obsessed with them, constantly checking their website for this week’s new offerings. She has dragged her parents to one shop one evening, where they spent 45 minutes waiting to get served.
One positive outcome is the granddaughter is now into baking. She’s getting a bunch of baking gadgets for her birthday tomorrow.
It sure was, and it was not new then, either, so neither did it come “out of nowhere” in the last two years nor is it a short trend. I believe it is still increasingly globally popular (at least the marketing people are still pushing it, which would explain why many bubble tea shops would pop up in some city all around the same time, and perhaps many vanish at the same time).
See post 72 where I was put straight. It’s the difference between viewing things from within London vs from the other side of the green belt.
j
But that’s the thing that surprised me: that a food trend first popular in Germany around 15 years ago only caught up in London two years ago. Normally we aren’t exactly trendsetters in pop cultural or culinary matters, it happens much more often that we adopt trends from the USA or the UK (or these days, from Korea) than the other way around.
Thing is, I live out in the sticks (somewhat); and the fact that bubble tea shops have set up in London’s Chinatown, and maybe one or two have snuck out into Leicester Square and Soho - that just isn’t something I’m going to notice. When three appear on my high street, that’s a different matter. So yeah, it appears that they have been present at a low level for some time, but now they are appearing everywhere.
j