Pearl milk tea, 珍珠奶茶
Pearl milk tea is a drink that originates from Taiwan. It is one of my favourite drinks and thus is on this web page.
What is it?
It's tea, with milk, or milk subsitute such as "coffee-mate", and tapioca balls. The tapioca balls are the "pearls". The pearls can vary in size from quite small (you can drink with a normal straw) to giant (you need a 20mm diameter straw). Some other names for the same drink are 珍珠奶茶, タピオカティー, Boba tea, Bubble tea. Boba / bubble refers to the special process used to make the tea.
In Taiwan, pearl milk tea can be found everywhere and is fully customisable: with green tea, with red (black) tea, hot, cold, iced, unsweetened, normal sugar, monster sugar, fruit flavoured, soya milk, and with various pearl sizes. Alas, outside of Taiwan pearl milk tea can be much harder to find.
More info
Take a look at the wikipedia bubble tea article or search the web.
Pearl milk tea around the world
These are the places I've encountered of particular note. There were more, especially with Coco in Taipei, that were excellent but my memory fails me on the names and prices.
| Where? | Price | Yummy? / Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 50嵐 台中市 北區一中街87-1號 |
20-55 元 (TW) | My great friend Lily bought me a cup of tea here. 50嵐 shops are mainly in the area around Taichung (台中) in central Taiwan. They have over 21 varieties of milk tea on the menu, with a host of other drinks too. Super yummy! |
| 樂杯思 台北市大安區 龍泉街13-1號 (NTNU) |
15-30 元 (TW) | This tea shop is renowned at NTNU. We had 溫紅綠 instead of pearl milk tea as it is a University favourite - lovely. |
| Jus Juice Bar, Broadmead, Bristol, UK | £2.80 小杯 £3.50 大杯 |
Very traditional style, yummy! Probably the nearest pearl milk tea shop to my house. They also do a range of different fruit flavoured and other interesting teas / juices. (Alas, this shop has now died, closed up and gone!) |
| Ten Ren Tea, 727 N. Broadway #136, Los Angeles, CA, USA | ~ $5 (US) | Quite nice Taiwanese tea, but US style (super sweet - always ask for reduced sugar!). They were playing a few taiwanese pop songs that I knew, which made me smile and think of KTV  . |
| Fat Straw, 1200 Villa Place (Edgehill Village), Nashville, TN, USA |
?? | Well, we got here but the shop had closed for the day so I can't say much myself. Highly recommended by my friend Chun-Yu though. |
| Beard Papa's Hollywood & Highland Shopping Center, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. No.1.5.-153, CA, USA |
~ $5 (US) | Beard Papa's is a Japanese franchise chain. The tea was ok... I had two while we watched the hollywood locals outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre - it was so hot and sunny. |
