Something I see at a lot of Boba places that's also super good is the "Flurry" (it also gets called "snow" or something similar). It's basically a plate of shaved ice (usually you share with someone), but the texture is like... cotton candy. And then they put sweetened condensed milk on it and you can add boba, bursters, bits of fruit, syrups, etc. It's great; the texture is so unique.
Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
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Re: Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
#12How did "boba" become the de facto term for the drink? I remember calling it "pearl milk tea" in middle school, somehow switching over to "bubble tea" in late high school to college, and now calling it "boba". And I don't think I heard of the slang meaning until much later.
Aside from that, as I am a first generation (native-born) Chinese-American, this article discusses my identity scarily well from an angle that I never really thought about. Despite Subtle Asian Traits becoming popular around the time that I was cutting my Facebook usage after I graduated and started work and "boba liberalism" being a term I learned today, I'm not really that many steps removed from this all. Why is it that I subconsciously tried hard to prove myself to classmates that I'm an American, but on the other hand, I tried to be as "Asian" as my Asian-American classmates? This article hit a cultural identity nerve in me and I haven't really formed a coherent set of thoughts on it.
(Maybe this also ties into why I'm such a boba purist in that I reject anything that isn't tapioca balls + whole milk + some sugar but not too much + good tea, though when I'm feeling less tolerant of lactose, oat milk surprisingly tastes almost no different from whole milk in a boba drink.)
Also, the boba metaphor for culture that the author presented also really works well in another way. A person born of parents from Shanghai and a person born of parents from Beijing can have very different cultural backgrounds, but that richness gets lost when they become Chinese-Americans. Similarly to how boba, a Taiwanese drink, has become a de facto symbol of Asian American cultural identity overall. Some might argue this is a "bad thing", but, well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm still coming up with a coherent set of thoughts around this.
Re: Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
#13Definitely spoiled living in the bay area where there seems to be way too many bubble tea places. One of my favorites though (which I can never get unless I am in south bay) is roasted buckwheat at Rabbit Rabbit.
Re: Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
#14Bubble tea is bizarre. I only recently stumbled upon it on a trip to Bankgkok after a local said "let's get something to drink". I fell in love with it immediately. It's something that has not yet fully permeated Northern Europe, and Helsinki (where I live) has (or had..) one or two places to get it from (pre-pandemic).
You should come to Melbourne CBD in Australia.
I can only assume they are being used as fronts to launder money or as a business investment to secure residency as there seems to be no possible way even a city of Melbourne's size could consume this much bubble tea. It's almost at the point where there are bubble tea sellers directly next to each other in the street. And I'm talking dozens, if not hundreds, of them.
Re: Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
#15I’m a big fan of bubble tea and I have noticed that across many bubble tea shops in the western US, while a fairly large 16oz serving has been standardized, there’s little standardization on sugar content. A lot of places ask if I want it half or 25% as sweet, but that’s not a great indication of sugar level or flavor unless I’ve already had tea from that place before.
Given that I think most folks can expect a cup of black tea to contain 0g sugar, I think expressing sweetness in terms of grams of added sugar is a pretty fair way of describing this stuff.
Re: Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
#16Something I see at a lot of Boba places that's also super good is the "Flurry" (it also gets called "snow" or something similar). It's basically a plate of shaved ice (usually you share with someone), but the texture is like... cotton candy. And then they put sweetened condensed milk on it and you can add boba, bursters, bits of fruit, syrups, etc. It's great; the texture is so unique.
This sounds like Bingsu.
Wikipedia has it as Patbingsu[1], but I've only seen it referred to as Bingsu on Korean food-y type Youtube, and I can find it here in Sydney as just 'Bingsu'. I've also only seen it as a shaved milk-ice, rather than water-ice.
Re: Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
#17Gross. I had bubble tea exactly once while interviewing at FB. I had to choke it back and try not look like an idiot. Pretty sure that is the one and only reason why I didn't get an offer - "this dude is clearly from the Midwest and has no place here." /s
Honestly that's how the first time experience is for most people, especially when they don't expect texture.
It's ok not to enjoy it but this kind of comment comes off as fairly antagonistic.
Re: Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
#18How did "boba" become the de facto term for the drink? I remember calling it "pearl milk tea" in middle school, somehow switching over to "bubble tea" in late high school to college, and now calling it "boba". And I don't think I heard of the slang meaning until much later. Aside from that, as I am a first generation (native-born) Chinese-American, this article discusses my identity scarily well from an angle that I…
The terminology difference just depends on who introduced the drink to the region and when. The east coast uses "bubble". West coast uses "boba". If your Chinese community was more Cantonese/HK than Mandarin/Taiwanese, you got "pearl" or "tapioca" instead (because HK also has a sago pearl drink and other tapioca based deserts).
Bubble is technically supposed to refer to the smaller tapioca balls (about the size of a normal straw), boba refers to the jumbo sized balls.
I think boba then became the dominant name because its the shortest and most distinctive.
Re: Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
#19I love boba and have since my Asian friends in high school introduced it to me years ago.
Granted, nowadays when I order "boba" (and say I'm ordering boba) I'm just referring to the tea by itself without the pearls/bubbles/boba. I mostly do this to cut down on sugar, since boba itself just has way too much. Though occasionally when I really am in the mood and I know the shop I'm at makes great boba, I do order it with the drink. It seems weird at first to call plain flavored tea boba if it doesn't contain them, but then a lot of my friends will also colloquially call the same thing "milk tea" even when they purposely get a milk-less tea at a shop ;).
I think these days I'm more of a "traditionalist" if there is such a thing, because my favorite shop is one mentioned in the article: Ten Ren. I believe there are two Bay Area locations and I tend to frequent the Cupertino one, though the Milpitas one is far more traditional since it's lined with canisters of teas of all kinds and the people who ring you up/make your drink are the older generation (unlike most modern boba shops that tend to have high school/college age employees). But anyway, in short Ten Ren, IMO, has some of the best-tasting and simple flavored teas compared to some of the weirdly, overly-complex ones at more hype shops.
Re: Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict
#20Bubble tea is bizarre. I only recently stumbled upon it on a trip to Bankgkok after a local said "let's get something to drink". I fell in love with it immediately. It's something that has not yet fully permeated Northern Europe, and Helsinki (where I live) has (or had..) one or two places to get it from (pre-pandemic).
The bubble tea in Bangkok is especially delicious, because it’s usually the bubble version of Thai tea (at least that’s what was most common when I lived there). Which is an especially delicious spiced black tea. The copious amounts of sugar it’s usually served with (or condensed milk) doesn’t hurt the flavor either.