If I could find the thread to link to I would, but it’s not important. The Flamster mentioned meeting some friends at a bubble tea shop, and being a middle-aged American I have no idea what this is, and I come here seeking enlightenment.
I think I might know what you’re talking about - these places have names like Lucky Cup, Bubble Cup, Bubble Star Cafe and PoPo Cup. Over here, it’s a predominately Asian thing, but it has its non-Asian supporters (like my boyfriend). 
You pretty much sit at tables and read magazines, talk, or play cards.
The one I go to (Lucky Cup) only sells drinks. They sell ice drinks, snowshakes, and different milk teas that come in disposable cups, and there are 10-20 flavours for each type of drink. You can get add-ons for the drinks, like pearls (little chewy balls of something), jelly or pudding. I’m not quite sure what the drinks are all made out of - I’m sure someone with more knowledge will be able to let you know.
Thanks to lel and Kal for alerting me to this thread.
Google search results for “bubble tea”
What Kayeby describes is pretty much accurate. The pearls are black chewy tapioca balls, and the jelly is usually coconut jelly. The bubble tea is made out of tea, different flavors, ice, and pearls/jelly. You can also get it without the pearls or jelly if you want.
You can sit down at the tables and talk, read magazines, play cards, etc. Of course, some bubble tea places have arcade-style games you can play. (like Photo Hunt – always fun with a bunch of people trying to spot the differences in the two pictures before time runs out) Then again, some bubble tea houses are set up like restaurants, with tables and a menu, and the whole bit. (it’s more than just bubble tea… there’s curry balls, soup, rice, etc.)
Flavors of bubble tea? Actually, there’s a fair number of them… here are some:
[ul]
[li]pineapple[/li][li]strawberry (if you’ve never tried bubble tea in a particular place before, this is the measure of it… if the strawberry’s bad, well… don’t go to the place again!)[/li][li]taro root[/li][li]green apple[/li][li]Ovaltine[/li][li]Horlicks[/li]li chocolate[/li][li]passion fruit[/li][li]mint[/li][li]mocha[/li][li]watermelon[/li][li]honeydew[/li][/ul]
As for the names of the places, a few we have around here are:
[ul]
[li]Bubble Boy[/li][li]Bubble World[/li][li]Oasis[/li][li]Dragon Ball Tea House[/li][li]Dessert Dynasty[/li][li]Jack’s Loft (one of those restaurant-type ones)[/li][li]the E-Bubble Cafe (I think it might have changed its name recently, though)[/li][/ul]
Richmond has a whole lot of these places… there are 40% Asians living here, you know. 
I’d say more, but the boards are going to be down really soon for the hamsters’ naptime. Perhaps I’ll add more later.
F_X
Since I still find myself up at 2:45 AM, I will add a little bit more:
Here is the thread that kittenblue was trying to find. (ah, the wonders of using the search engine when practically nobody is on the site! :D)
Here, it costs at least $2.50 to $3.50 for a cup of bubble tea. (though there is a place in Richmond that sells a litre of bubble tea for $3… that’s pretty good)
Hopefully, the links in Google will help more than I can.
F_X
Talk about a roundabout way to get an explanation! This finally answers my question about what milk tea with pearls is. A Chinese friend of mine was trying to explain what it was 2 years ago but his English wasn’t that great and I never did understand what he was talking about… until now :).
So Its asias version of starbucks/ coffee houses ect generally ?
I was always told tea was more popuar in asia than coffee… Is this true ?
Wow. I had no idea tapioca came in black and colors…I’ve only ever seen white. Thanks for the link and explanation…this is definitely a product that hasn’t hit Cleveland yet as far as I know. So if I understand this correctly, bubble tea is a flavored ice tea to which you add these cooked tapioca balls that are real chewy and you need a really thick straw to drink it with. I liked the warnings on the one link…try not to choke on the tapioca pearls, and don’t try this at home, it’s better if someone else makes it. If I drank ice tea, this might be interesting. Thanks.
It’s interesting stuff. I tried some while visiting friends in Toronto, and it must be an acquired taste. It’s not bad, but I generally prefer that my iced tea not be chewy.
Man, oh man…
When I was visiting NYC, Maeglin brought my friends and I to a little Bubble Tea shop in the East Village.
Having no idea what bubble tea was or how we would feel about it, the two of us who were brave enough to give it a go were also too scared to try to order it on our own. Thus we ended up with sesame bubble tea with black “bubbles” and milk.
We’re just not cut out for the Big City, I don’t believe.
I managed to suck up THREE! of these honking black tapioca balls in my first sip. Shortly thereafter, these three were unceremoniously deposited on the sidewalk in front of the Bubble Tea shop.
By the end of my experience, I had gotten in a bit of a groove and was eating the tapioca balls one by one with measured indecisiveness.
To this day, I still haven’t formed an opinion of it… but I haven’t managed to try it since.
Amen to that. The teas, however, are usually quite tasty.
What’s been said in the thread so far seems pretty accurate, but I’d like to add a few things. First, it only cost $2.50 or more in big cities or non-asian areas. If you go to San Gabriel or Monterey Park (in Southern California) you can get it for a $1.00 a cup. Much cheaper than Starbucks. There’s an amazing variety of flavors and combinations. Probably over 50 at some places. Some of them are just tapioca and fruit juice with blended ice. Some of them are milk tea or milk coffee variations. In some of the fruit flavors they’ll add jelly too. A lot of the milk tea/coffee flavors are served with ice, but some are served hot. The tapioca balls are more accurately called Boba and is often freshly boiled before being put in your drink. It is an acquired taste, but I seemed to like it the first time I tried it about 7 years ago.
Here’s one of the places I usually go to: http://www.boba.com/ .
You can check out their menu and see what it’s all about.
Huh. There are bubble tea places all over Toronto. There’s even a bubble tea/hair salon. Really! I’ve only tried it once, and I wasn’t impressed, but this thread is piquing my curiosity. Perhaps I’ll give it another try.
The pearls freak me out. I think it’s because my cousin gets pearls in her drink, and then stores them in her cheeks like a chipmunk. Afterwards, she opens her mouth and shows us this mass of shiny little black googly things.
Thats cool to know, I’ve never seen bubble drinks anywhere but here in Hawaii. There’s a stand on every corner it seems. Though the tea variety isn’t as popular as the fruit juice bubble drinks.
I’ve been looking for a new job opportunity to arise…maybe I could open Cleveland’s first bubble-tea shop. Seems to be a booming business.
I first saw this about five years ago in City of Industry, CA while working in an almost entirely Asian business (me? oh, I’m 6,4 and quite caucasian…didn’t stick out at all). My coworkers has this bizarre looking drink. It looked like a giant coffee with ice and these dark brown marbles at the bottom. I inquired about the drink and the next day someone brought me one after lunch. Not at all what I expected, but I really liked it.
I usually get mine with the milky red tea. I learned the proper name for boba with red tea in Chinese, but the people at Little Bean look at me funny when I try to say it. (Darn that caucasianness.)
The first time Ruffian tried it, she didn’t realize that you eat the balls, too (ooh, band name), so she was a little caught off guard when that first ball left the straw for her mouth. I watched and laughted as the ball then left her mouth and headed back to the straw. Turns out she’s not a big fan of the boba.
Also, one of my coworkers told me to be careful how I used the word boba. Something about it being slang for boobs. Cool
Yay for the search function! I found this before starting my own thread.
I’m addicted to the stuff. I had my first one a couple of weeks ago at a big Vietnamese pho restaurant in San Jose – it was a mango shake with black pearls. This restaurant also served an avocado shake with black pearls! The mango shake was most awesome, and since I love the texture of regular tapioca, I was addicted to the chewy little spheres by about the third pearl.
This website shows how you can order up pearls, drink mixes and straws to make your own at home. Hmmmmmm. Bubble tea margaritas, anyone?
As I type, I’m drinking my second bubble tea, which I got at a Korean fast food place. It’s a milky honeydew melon drink, and it’s very good as well. I googled up some bubble tea sites before posting here, and learned that kids love to shoot the pearls at each other through that big straw, and the pearls stick ferociously onto clothing and walls. Not that I feel tempted to try that myself . . .
[Thooonk! Hey, cool!]
[Chuck Heston]
Bubble Tea is people!
[/Chuck Heston]
I just walked home from the Commercial Drive ('bout nine kilometers,) area under the noonday sun, (does that make me a mad dog or an englishman?,) and I’m just about ready for a cuppa. (Trying to quit coffee. Again.)
As soon as I can bring myself to go outside again.
I was wondering what this thread was doing bumped, and I now have my answer.
Larry, it’s way too hot to even consider going outside! (although I might later) And as for your quitting coffee, weren’t you mentioning over the weekend that you had two POTS of the stuff before heading out to meet us at the Dopefest? :eek: But maybe bubble tea is better for you than coffee. (I know I want some bubble tea [the extent of the coffee drinking I do is largely confined to stealing my brother’s on the weekends early Saturday morning], so maybe I’ll head out to the mall later and get a cup)
Nothing else to add, except I remember the time that my friends and I were at Oasis (or Bubble World), and my brother saw someone he knew working there. It was his friend Sherwin’s sister, and the ironic thing was that her name is Pearl. Imagine that… someone named Pearl working in a bubble tea place. Can’t get too much more ironic than that in the bubble tea shop environment!
F_X
Wow, that’s a dirty joke (or sexual harassment) just waiting to happen…