Conversion!

My friend Sharon: "I never liked boba before I met you, Cat."

VICTORY! ^-^

Ho Ho Boba!

Know what makes the holidays even better?

Hot chocolate with boba. Try it! I had my first at Tea Storm, a China chain. It's quite the dance party for your tongue.

Happy holidays!

Chengdu, Sichuan Province - The boba here is definitely not spicy, but it provides short-lived relief when you're eating FIRE (a.k.a. Sichuan food...any Sichuan food). The place we went to near our hostel was sub-par: tepid milk tea and tapioca that clumped together. I've come to accept that boba around China, especially outside the big cities, is nothing to cheer about. But for <5 RMB, I can live with that.


Meh boba


Place that serves meh boba


Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan Province - A gorgeous locale with decidedly less impressive boba. In fact, the chocolate boba I ordered DIDN'T EVEN COME WITH TAPIOCA. I felt so cheated. The tea was decent, though. It tasted a little hot chocolate but not as thick, and pleasant enough. But you know what would've made it more pleasant? That's right. Boba.


Boba stand right outside the nature reserve

Too hot to boba?

Tomorrow, I'll be traveling to Sichuan, a province known for its spicy food and hot pot. Do you think they'll have SPICY BOBA?!

That would be disgusting. But not disgusting enough to not try it. (What a confusing sentence. You understood it, though.)

Nanjing nai cha

Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China - Boba lives outside Dr. Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum (Zhongshan ling).

It tasted like tepid soup, the tapioca was mush, and the cup had a picture of a man pulling a million-pound fish out of the water. The word "relaxing" is written above said picture. Is reeling in a fish the size of Texas really that relaxing, really? REALLY?

And what would the founding father of China say if he knew they were serving such an atrocity outside his resting place?

Also, at 5 RMB, it's considered pricey. For China. Really, though, the experience of visiting Dr. Sun's mausoleum far surpasses any criticism of mediocre boba I could ever think of. I might be losing my edge.

OH, and did I mention that the hostel where I stayed was attached to a boba place? Honestly, China, you're just making it too easy for me. More on hostel-boba later. No time right now to write about the many complicated drinks this place serves (including milk tea with boba, pudding and ice cream. In ONE DRINK. I know!)

Also stay tuned for DIY boba. We're talkin' milk tea in a teapot, a mug of tapioca, and a spoon. Mix it to your own liking. As my friend Nick (creator of the phrase "no-ba") would say, "Oh, boy!"


Outside Dr. Sun's mausoleum. That sign says "boba" in Chinese.


Relaxing indeed


DIY boba at Mao Kong


Shhh, not while I'm mixing

No-ba

Jiujiang (九江- Nine Rivers), Jiangxi Province, China - On my way to Lushan Mountain (where many famous Chinese poets have gone for inspiration...also where Chiang Kai-shek lived during Kuomingtang rule and, later, where Mao Tse-tung and the Communist Party met during the Cultural Revolution) I stumbled upon a boba stand.


Bei Fu

And by "stumbled," I mean I asked every store owner in sight, and proceeded to drag my poor travelmates around a freezing drizzly night until success was found.

The result: very disappointing. Have you ever heard of a boba place RUNNING OUT OF BOBA? I know, that was my reaction too.

Cat: Yi bei zhen zhou nai cha (One cup of milk tea with tapioca, please).
Boba man: Zhen zhou mai guang le (We ran out of tapioca).
Cat: (gasp) Oh my god!!!
Cat's friends: Hahahahaha!

Not cool. So I begrudgingly settled for regular milk tea with no tapioca. It was mediocre. I suppose that if nothing else, it was nice having hot tea on a cold night. At least it helped warm my cold, cold heart, in which there is a void left by the lack of boba in Jiujiang.


Milk tea, sans boba. Hrmph.


Note: the title of this blog entry must be attributed to my friend Nick who, when another friend refused a sip of my boba, said, "No-ba?" Credit where credit is due, indeed.

(Way) Lost in Translation

Shanghai - Okay, I am an idiot. So I go to this little boba hole-in-the-wall across the street from my dorm, right. (For the record, that's in the Yangpu district of Shanghai.) And instead of ordering my usual milk tea with boba (here, it's zhen zhu nai cha. Zen zhu = pearl, nai cha = milk tea), I decide to be adventurous because hey, my buddy from Hong Kong is visiting and we should live it up and have some flavored boba for a change, right.

Oh, one more thing: we just learned fruits in Chinese class last week.

So, thinking I'm all cool and well-versed in my fruit, I order a honeydew ("honey-gua") boba for my friend, and a coconut (bo luo) boba for myself, which I had seriously been thinking about for a week and just never knew how to order, because I didn't know how to say coconut in Chinese, and was too lazy to look it up.

I get my boba (which is a suspicious yellowish color, instead of white), take a sip, and vehemently declare, "This is SO not coconut!" Imagine wanting coconut boba for an entire week and then getting some weird pineapple-tasting thing instead. I was pissed!

Turns out it was pineapple. Because bo luo means pineapple in Chinese.

How do you say "Oops" in Chinese?


Honeydew boba (L) and pineapple (NOT coconut) boba (R)

In any case, both were gross. You could still taste the powder they used to make the milk tea. It was only 2.5RMB, though, which is about $0.33. Forgivable? I'm still deciding.

When I have a few minutes, I'll give the complete Boba Briefing. For now, I'm going to go look for a video I took of a woman making boba in rural(ish) Huangshan, where I went for National Week Holiday. No joke - I was outside the gates of Xidi, an ancient village founded in 1047 in southern Anhui province, and there was a boba stand. Look for updates soon, as well as entries about a Lollicup near the Guilin night markets!

OMG

Shanghai - OMIGOD. I didn't think I'd be able to post from China. I think this is what's going on: China blocks blogspot.com, but not blogger.com. Ergo, I can log in, post and edit my entries, but I can't view my blog afterwards. Or read the comments that people leave me. It's like having an itch you can't scratch. Infuriating!

Word on the street is that in China, "upscale" boba places serve you tea, tapioca and cream/sugar all separately so you can add the condiments according to your personal taste preferences. Will investigate further.

My life just got so much better. Didn't yours?

Bye-bye boba

I should've seen it coming. My study abroad semester in Shanghai will be marred by the fact that China blocks blogspot and pretty much every other common blogging site you can think of. BUT never fear. I WILL continue the worldwide boba tour, just not on this site...at least, not until I return to the States. I don't know yet what the new URL will be, but I'll be sure to notify my loyal reader(s) of any updates on the situation.

In the meantime, please e-mail me at CatherineChangHsinHo@gmail.com. Messages sent to this account are not limited to boba discussion, though I may nudge our conversation toward that direction.

Seeing that I'm off to China tomorrow, it seems fitting to bid a temporary farewell in Mandarin. So, hui tou jian! (See ya soon!) Here's one last post to tide you over until January:


Mountain View, Calif. - Verde is one of several boba places that lots of Bay Area kids associate with their youth. And by "youth," I mean their formative high school years during which they flocked to boba places after school to overreact about SAT scores. I say "they," not "us," because I grew up in Almaden, not Cupertino/Saratoga/Palo Alto/Los Altos/Mountain View. I'm told by two trusted sources that, until about a year ago, Verde was totally camped out with neon green and blue decor, Britney Spears concert DVDs blasting in the corner, and Chinese chess boards. Today, the space is much more...hmm, shall we say...chic? Less garish, certainly. Dim lighting and rich dark brown wood ("My apartment smells of rich mahogany...") make for a less intimidating environment for non-boba connoisseurs, we concluded.

BOBA BRIEFING
Name: Verde Tea Cafe












Address: 852 Villa St., Mountain View, CA 94041. Another location in Cupertino.
Phone: (650) 210-9986
Date visited: Monday, Aug. 27, 2007
Goes by: Boba, QQ pearls
Price: $2.75-$3.75
Form: Summer shaved ice (only in the summer), smoothie freeze, frozen romance (like a smoothie, but with more fresh fruit and ice, and thicker), frothy iced tea, frothy milk tea
Flavors: About 80
Hot/cold: Both
Flavors tried: Frothy pearl milk tea, Pink Valentine frozen romance (rose petals)
Lid style: VERY hard plastic, pre-poked. More on this later.
Smiles: I really like the frothy quality of the milk tea. For one, it makes for a thicker top layer that actually allows the straw to stand alone like such:

• The sizes are quite large. Plus, the dome-like lid allows for an extra dollop of smoothie or frozen romance that a flat lid would not permit. We call this lid style the BOBA MAXIMIZER. The BOBA MAXIMIZER makes for good boba bang for your buck.

• The BOBA MAXIMIZER is also surprisingly strong. In fact, my friend cut her finger trying to pry it off. Bad for fingers, good for preventing boba spillage.

• The tea is sweet, but the tea flavor is definitely still distinct.

• The frozen romance is much thicker than I imagined a blend of ice and fruit could be. It's so thick that if you stir up the tapioca, the romance will actually support the weight of the balls, and effectively hold the balls in place. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd write.)

Scowls: This is unfair, but I don't really like the idea of eating rose petals (Pink Valentine was Angie's order, not mine), so I didn't enjoy the frozen romance as much as another person might. But, like I said, that's an unfair criticism. More importantly, though, a horde of girls came in at one point (a local soccer team, perhaps?), and one of them tried drinking boba with a NORMAL STRAW. What respectable boba place would allow for this kind of nonsense?

Most memorable bo-ment: Coming up with the term BOBA MAXIMIZER. Duh.

Pondering the benefits of boba maximization

Overall rating: 9/10

Thrice the boba

Me and my sister IM-ing while she's at work (two days after having boba in LA during a visit with relatives):

E: How come the posts from LA aren't there?
C: I haven't uploaded pix yet
C: omg woman, don't you ever work?!
E: I try not to...

All right, keep your knickers on.

Rowland Heights, Calif. - Okay, the first thing you should know about Rowland Heights is that it has one of the densest Chinese populations in the United States. This is especially true with Taiwanese immigrants. Now, consider this: boba originated in Taiwan. You do the math. Here, I'll help:

B = boba

F = fobbiness*

*I am using this term out of endearment - something I can do because I am related to "fobs" and have had lifelong contact with so-called "fob culture." If you haven't, I don't suggest you do the same, lest you fancy a beating...

Anyways,

B + F = Boba in nearly every shopping center for a two-mile stretch

Alternate solution:

B + F = Hitting up three (yes, THREE. Tres. Trois.) boba places within 30 minutes. Folks, that's called power boba-ing.

BOBA BRIEFING (1)
Name: Little Bean (Chinese translation: Green bean sprout)

Little Bean entrance

Address: 18145 Colima Rd., Rowland Heights, CA 91748
Phone: (626) 965-1616
Web site: www.littlebean.com

Date visited: Saturday, Aug. 25, 2007
Goes by: Boba
Price: $2.50-$3.50
Form: Fruit smoothie, tea, milky tea
Flavors: More than 100
Hot/cold: Both
Flavors tried: Tapioca milky red tea

Tapioca milk red tea

Lid style: Hard plastic, pre-poked
Smiles: Fast, easy and sweet.

• I ordered my drink and got it in about 30 seconds. Scoop, pour, cap and...*spirit fingers*

Rapid-fire boba scooping


Rapid-fire milk tea pouring

• They sell seemingly endless rows of candy: Nerds, Pop Rocks, those speckled egg things (do they have a name?), and lots more.

Candy!

• Their TV was playing Beijing opera.

• If you've grown up suppressing guffaws over mispelled Chinese menu items and supermarket signs, you'll appreciate this category on their menu: "Tea Time and Desert"

• Gift certificates and gift baskets

• They deliver for orders of more than $30 within 5 miles.
  

Scowls: A few.

• The boba was still warm when I started drinking. It cooled off quickly, but for the first couple minutes, you're slurping up warm gooey stuff while drinking cool-ish tea, which is kinda disorienting. Guess that's what happens when you try to wham-bam-thank-you-boba.


• Minimum for paying with credit card is $15.00. Not a problem this time, but what happens if I get robbed on the way to boba, and dumb thieves steal ONLY my cash? I'd have to buy, like, six boba. Look, I'm not MADE of money. I just got robbed, remember?


• LOTS of leftover boba after finishing the tea. I might've drank it wrong, but I've never been THIS off. I blame Taiwan.

Most memorable bo-ment: I really embarassed my sister by taking lots of boba photos. That was fun.

Overall rating: 8/10

--30--

BOBA BRIEFING (2)

Name: Ten Ren's Tea Time



Counter

Address: 18423 Colima Rd., Rowland Heights, CA 91748. Other locations in Walnut, City of Industry, Arcadia and Riverside.
Phone: (626) 854-6045
Web site: www.tenrenusa.com
Date visited: Saturday, Aug. 25, 2007
Goes by: Boba
Price: $2.75-$4.25 (Add $0.50 for boba)
Form: Milk tea, flavored tea, teazer (icy smoothie-like blends), iced coffee
Flavors: About 70
Hot/cold: Both (double check)
Flavors tried: Almond milk tea w/ boba

My sister and almond milk tea

Lid style: Hard plastic, pre-poked
Smiles:

• The almond milk tea had a very pleasant flavor - not too sweet, and with just enough almond flavoring.


• The boba is soft, but with enough resistance when you chew.


• Gift cards


• Lots of young fobby people
  


• They sell a wide array of boxed tea and tea sets. This chain originally started out as a tea store, and later branched out to boba.

Tea, tea and more tea

• Concert fliers for my boy Jay Chou!
• Tacky decor - think green paper vines hanging from the windows. While others may have put this under the "Scowls" section, I chose to embrace the tastelessness. Who doesn't love crepe paper?
  

From the outside

Scowls:

• Again, lots of leftover boba. I'm not sure who I should blame this time.


• I don't like places that charge extra for boba. Who would go to a boba store and just order plain tea?
  

Most memorable bo-ment: Afterwards, we ducked into a fobby Asian store that sells socks that help you lose weight. I am not lying. Here:

Let's diet! With socks!

Overall rating: 9/10

--30--

BOBA BRIEFING (3)

Name: Phoenix Food Boutique

Address: 1709 Nogales St., Rowland Heights, CA 91748. Other locations in Alhambra, LA, Irvine, Arcadia, San Gabriel, Pasadena.

Phone: (626) 810-8988

Web site: www.phoenixfoodboutique.com

Date visited: Saturday, Aug. 25, 2007

Goes by: This is complicated, partly because it isn't what most people consider "normal" boba. In fact, I went back and forth about whether to blog about this place at all. Obviously, I didn't think that hard. They use regular tapioca (the little kind you find in tapioca pudding) and fresh fruit chopped up in little pieces so you can suck them up the fat straw. Moreover, drinks are coconut milk-based, not tea. Told ya it was complicated.

Price: $2.95

Form: Fruit drink, tropical drink. All in coconut milk.

Flavors: Check online menu

Hot/Cold: Cold

Flavors tried: Mixed fruit (watermelon, melon, mango); mango; taro

Mango tropical drink

Lid style: Hard plastic, pre-poked

Smiles: They definitely get brownie (boba?) points for uniqueness.

• If you like coconut milk, I think you'll really enjoy this. It's light, sweet and refreshing.

• Sometimes, it's nice to branch out from the same old milk tea.

• I'd never really thought about what a novel idea it is to suck up actual pieces of fruit with a straw. Don't you think this would be a really clever way to trick children into eating fruit?
  

Scowls:

• They were a little rude when asking us to move out of the way when we were standing by the register waiting for our drinks. If you want us to move, then make our drinks faster!

• Mango and taro work really well in this concoction because they're firm and retain their texture in liquid, but the watermelon gets mushy.
  

Most memorable bo-ment: Marveling at their gorgeous mochi. (You have to keep clicking the image until you see pastel-colored balls made of sweet rice flour.) For more about mochi, click here.

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Flying boba

Since I've been spending considerable time on planes lately, I got to wondering:

• Do you think airlines will ever serve boba?
• Do you think airports (in the States) will ever serve boba?

I think that if an airline were to venture into this territory, they should start with flights between LA and San Francisco/San Jose. Think about that demand!

And if it didn't take off (ha, ha) I would singlehandedly support them.

Bo-baw

Boston, Mass. - A brief stint in Baw-ston proved QUITE fruitful in the quest for good boba. Boston Tea Stop has been in Harvard Square for about 2.5 years, after replacing what used to be a Lollicup. And here, boba goes by its God-give name: boba. After a summer of listening to people call it "bubble tea," it was like going back home!

BOBA BRIEFING
Name: Boston Tea Stop
Address: 54 JFK St., Cambridge, MA 02138 (Harvard Square)
Phone: (617) 945-0017
Date visited: Sunday, Aug. 19, 2007
Goes by: Boba
Price: $3.15 - $4.00
Form: Milk tea, tea, infusion milk tea (basically flavored milk tea), ice blended drinks, juice. You can substitute jelly for boba, or do 1/2 boba, 1/2 jelly.
Flavors: About 70. Jelly flavors: lychee and mango

Menu

Hot/cold: Both
Flavors tried: Milk tea, yogurt infusion milk tea, almond infusion milk tea

Milk tea


Yogurt infusion milk tea

Lid style: Sealed plastic wrap
Smiles: Where do I begin?

• Taste, texture and proportion of tea:boba are pretty darn near perfect.
  
• The yogurt infusion milk tea is boba-tastic. It's exactly like Yoduly, the miniature Asian drinks that all of us ABC kids used to freeze to make slush. Yum!
  
• They call their hot milk tea "hottie." Hottie!
  
• They sell Boston Tea Stop T-shirts for $10.50 and mugs for $3.50.
• It's always nice enjoying boba with folks who understand boba: my old Berkeley buddies and kindergarten-through-HS buddy Tiff (also an MIT genius).
• Wi-fi
• Given its proximity to several campuses, it gets lots of traffic from college students.
  

Scowls:

• Their Web site is down. That's all I got. Seriously.
  

Most memorable bo-ment(s):




Overall rating: 9.5/10

Disapproval!

San Jose, Calif. - Now that I'm back in boba land for a few days, I feel immobilized by indecision. Do I go to ALL the boba places? Should I stick to Cupertino? What about Berkeley? And Oakland? And SAN FRANCISCO? I need to strategize.

My mom, on my boba blog:
"Ni you ne me wu liao, mah?"
Translation: "Are you really that pathetically bored?"

Maybe I should invest in a boba chain store. That way, at least I'd be supporting my own stock.

Abob

Windsor, ON - I'll give you a second to figure out that "abob" means.

Got it?

No?

Dude, pick it up a notch. Lemme put it this way: the new bubble tea shop on Wyandotte is called Elppa, which is "apple" spelled backwards, the nice lady behind the counter told me. Okay, and that's significant because...it's not. Just cute! Let's move on.

BOBA BRIEFING
Name: Elppa Desserts & Bubble Tea
Address: 2065 Wyandotte St. West, Windsor, ON N9B 1J8
Phone: Owner's cell phone, which is in my purse somewhere...
Email: elppaboba@hotmail.com
Date visited: July 2007
Goes by: Bubble tea, boba
Price: Let you know when I go back. I think it was around $3.
Form: Tea, milk tea, fruit smoothies. They also serve drinks with jelly (more like little strips of Jell-O, but it's called jelly) instead of tapioca. You can also get your drink with both - if you think you're ready for this jelly. Oh yes, I went there.
Flavors: Many
Hot/cold: Cold
Flavors tried: Black milk tea, passion fruit with jelly
Lid style: Check me on this
Smiles: Here's the story: I joined two co-workers to lunch in Canada (half of my motivation to do so may or may not have been because I knew I'd be in close proximity to boba), thinking I'd drop by Waku-Waku Teahouse on Wyandotte on our way back, and bring back boba for my editor so he wouldn't think I'd been making up this weird-sounding tapioca drink. When that ended up being closed - on a Friday afternoon?! - I ducked into a Chinese BBQ place to inquire about other boba options. Lo and behold, Elppa was just two doors down!

The tapioca is definitely decent - chewy without being too soft. The ambiance of the place is way cute - round colorful pillows and chairs, curtains and colored lighting.

The passion fruit tea was very refreshing, and the jelly was nice and light. It's pretty hard to screw up jelly, though.

Scowls: Should black milk tea look...purple? Okay, I thought, don't judge a boba by its color, blah blah blah. But it tasted a little too much like milk, and not enough like tea. They're also really slow. It took maybe 15 minutes to make four drinks.

Most memorable bo-ment: Forcing, I mean suggesting to my editor that he try boba for the first time. He's a nice guy, so he humored me (probably while secretly thinking, When can we fire this nutjob?).

Overall rating: 7/10

That's the way the boba crumbles

Detroit, Mich. - You have no idea how much it delights me to write a boba dateline from Detroit. Boba lives in the Motor City! Who'da thunk it?

Updated 8/24/07: I haven't decided what format to use when I make multiple trips to the same place and have new things to add. For the time being, look for updates in italics.

BOBA BRIEFING
Name: Orchid Thai
Address: 115 Monroe St., Detroit, MI 48226
Phone: (313) 962-0225
Date visited: Monday, July 16, 2007. Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007.
Goes by: Bubble drinks
Price: $3.95
Form: Fruit smoothies, with whipped cream on top. Blech. You can also ask for tapioca in Thai iced tea and iced coffee, for the same price.
Flavors: Strawberry, mango, kiwi, cappuchino
Hot/cold: Cold
Flavors tried: Thai iced tea, iced coffee, mango

Thai iced tea (notice the boba on TOP)

Lid style: A very unfashionable and environmentally hostile Styrofoam cup with a plastic lid. No straw-poking necessary.

An environmental evil.

Smiles: Since this was the first place I found in Detroit that serves boba, I was smiling till my face hurt. Until I tried the boba. However:

• They let me into their kitchen to watch them make the boba. Check it out: (dammit, why didn't I do video? Think, Catherine, THINK!)

Pouring Thai iced tea


Boba, before contact with mango smoothie


Making mango smoothie from mango syrup


Mango smoothie

Scowls: Sigh. The tapioca is disappointingly hard, but that's not even the worst part. It's also crumbly. Crumbly! How is it even possible to MAKE crumbly tapioca? You'll have to ask these guys. Also, $3.95 for sub-par boba seems like a lot to ask for, no?

• The second (okay fine, third) time here, my problem with the boba was that when it's in an icy smoothie, the tapioca gets icy and hard, and sticks together so that they're no longer separate balls, but rather chunks of icy tapioca. Yes, it's as gross as it sounds.
  
• Okay, I'm confused. Our waitress had NO IDEA what we were talking about when we said we came for bubble drinks. It's ON your MENU! What gives?
• This is also confusing: my boba drinking buddy's Thai iced tea w/ tapioca came with the tapioca floating on top. I have NEVER seen this before. I am so, so confused.
  

Joe and Thai iced tea w/ bubbles

Most memorable bo-ment: This quote, from a fellow Freep intern who shall remain nameless, except that his first name starts with B and ends with O, and his last name starts with T and ends with "weh":
"Boba singular is bobum. It's like data."
Ladies, he's still singular. Just kidding.

Also, this was my last boba outing before leaving the D. Thanks Joe!

Overall rating: 6/10

A Bubble Island of hope

Ann Arbor, Mich. - I've now been to Bubble Island in Ann Arbor several times, the first of which I went to great lengths to harass store owners, college students and pedestrians about their knowledge of a rumored boba establishment near the University of Michigan. (In my defense, this was the first time I'd heard of boba existing in Michigan, so just picture this cat and you'll understand how excited this Cat was.)

Here is a story The State News (Michigan State's student newspaper) published in 2005, on Bubble Island's location in East Lansing. My favorite part:
"It's a real big craze out in California," said Sam Hickerson, one of Bubble Island's two co-owners. "On one block, you'll see three to four bubble tea businesses fighting for business."

Did Hickerson visit the boba haven that is Berkeley, CA?

BOBA BRIEFING
Name: Bubble Island
Address: 1220 South University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48104. They also have a location in East Lansing.
Phone: (734) 222-9013
Date visited: Most recently, Sunday, Aug. 5, 2007
Goes by: Bubble tea
Price: $3.39-$3.50
Form: Tea, milk tea, fruit smoothies and slushies called "snow bubbles"
Flavors: More than 100
Hot/cold: Both. They serve hot versions of anything with milk tea in it.
Flavors tried: Black milk tea, almond milk tea with "colored bubbles"
Lid style: Plastic-wrap top. Boba novices beware!
Smiles: The boba has a good chewy - but not too soft - quality, probably the best within 50 (fiddy) miles of Detroit. On the U.S. side, that is. They also serve mochi ice cream, which I haven't found since leaving California. Their curly fries and popcorn chicken are also yummy and cheap (both less than $4), but I feel like we're stealing focus from the boba...
Other smile-worthy attributes:

• You get a free drink after you fill up your card with five stamps. If you get a card and don't think you'll go back, YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME.
• They're open everyday until 2 a.m., and until 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
• This is an important one: Bubble Island is the only place in Michigan where people behind the counter didn't give me a quizzical look when I referred to boba as "boba" instead of "bubble tea." They speak my language!
  

Scowls: The colored bubbles (which you can get for $0.35 extra) are supposed to be sweeter, but they taste the same as regular tapioca, and it's not like you can see the boba while you're drinking anyways. I wouldn't pay extra for them again, even though they are awfully cute. And pink!
Most memorable bo-ment: Looking for parking in the rain with Freep buddy Sarah. Actually, forget it. I could write a separate entry about this incident.
Overall rating: 9/10

Boba-Boba

Windsor, Ontario - Prepare yourself for a story so sweet it'll leave you with cavities. The co-owners of Waku-Waku Tea House are engaged, and opened the store together in 2000 when they were students at the University of Windsor. They were dating at the time. (Wow, talk about commitment - I'd never be able to walk away from a guy who owned 50% of a boba joint.) Susie is from Malaysia, Edmund is from Hong Kong, and they're getting married in August 2008. "Waku-waku" means "excitement" in Japanese slang, and it looks like they have lots ahead of them!

That's Susie's head behind the counter. I opted not to take photos of her and Edmund, seeing that it might seem creepy I was so interested in their story.

BOBA BRIEFING
Name: Waku-Waku Tea House
Address: 1901 Wyandotte Street West, Windsor, Ontario N9B TJ6
Phone: (519) 977-5539
Date visited: Most recently, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007
Goes by: Bubble drinks
Price: $2.99-3.99 Canadian dollars. $0.50 extra for bubbles or jelly
Form: Black tea, green tea, milk black tea, milk green tea, coffee-flavored blizzard/hot, juicy blizzard, yogurt blizzard, green tea blizzard, milky blizzard, yogo drink*, fresh fruit blizzard**

*Yogo is like Yoplait, but blended with ice, and less sweet
**Blizzard is like a milkshake

Flavors:128. Jelly flavors: strawberry, grape, pineapple, passion fruit, coffee
Hot/cold: Both
Flavors tried: Black milk tea, coffee milky blizzard

Black milk tea


Coffee milky blizzard

Smiles: This is probably the best combination of tea and tapioca I’ve had...maybe ever. The milk tea isn’t too sweet, and has that classic sweetened tea flavor that brings back memories of drinking zhen zhu nai cha (literally translated: "pearls milk tea") while my mum shopped for produce and fish at Marina Food. Sigh. The tapioca is VERY well made – just chewy enough, and not too soft.
More reasons to smile:

• Wireless internet

Wi-fi, boba-style

• College towny hours:
• 6 p.m.-2 a.m. M-Th
• 6 p.m.-3 a.m. FSat
• 6 p.m.-12 a.m. Sunday
• You write down your order on a menu, where you can indicate size (S/L), hot or cold (H/C), bubbles or jelly (B/J), and quantity

Menu

• They play music, some Chinese, some American
• Young people hang out here. Some come from nearby high schools, some from the University of Windsor. Reminds me of Old Teahouse in Berkeley.
• The food looks promising. Noodle bowls, rice bowls, curries, dumplings, toast, ice cream and "Waku-Bing!" - red bean topped with shaved ice and ice cream with syrup

Scowls:

• With about two inches of tea left, I ran out of tapioca. This has NEVER happened before. If anything, I'll have leftover tapioca after I've finished all the tea. Ungodly.
• I couldn't get my wireless to work, so all that cute sign did was piss me off.
• When I said "boba," Susie said, "You mean 'bubbles?'" NO, I MEAN BOBA.
• I know the menu said "small," but the small is awfully small. On the bright side, I felt like a giant holding it.
• The place itself is kinda dingy. If I ever dragged coerced took you here, you'd probably think I was planning on beating you up and stealing your money. (I probably won't, though.) The outside is a little rundown. Inside, the tables and chairs look pretty flimsy, and I imagine they'd collapse if I drank one too many boba.
  

Most memorable bo-ment: Haha. This is embarrassing. The first time I came here, I thought they’d take American credit card, and it turns out they don’t. Cutting to the chase, I ran to the 7-11 a couple blocks away to find an ATM, and ran (and I do mean RAN) back to where my boba was waiting for me at the counter. Oops.

Overall rating: 9.5/10

The Joy (Yee's) of boba

As you can probably tell, I've been brimming with boba blog material for weeks, and am just now getting around to posting it all.

Chicago, Ill. - I drove to the Windy City two weeks ago to get my visa for China, and to visit one of my oldest and dearest friends Christine Lin, who goes to med school at Northwestern (a future doctor! If a future MD condones my boba habit, it's gotta be okay, right?). Some very interesting boba consumption ensued at Joy Yee's in Chinatown, which claims to be the first in the Midwest to offer Taiwanese-style bubble teas AND the first to combine fruit smoothies with tapioca. What lofty claims!

BOBA BRIEFING
Name: Joy Yee's Noodles Pan-Asian Cuisine
Address: 2159 South China Place, Chicago, IL 60616. There are also locations in Evanston, Halsted and Naperville.
Phone: (312) 328-0001
Date visited: Sunday, July 22, 2007
Goes by: Bubble tea
Price: $3.25-$3.75
Form: Fresh fruit freezes, tapioca freezes, tapioca milk tea, green tapioca freeze, tapioca crystal jelly freeze, fresh fruit with green jelly, shave ice, mini pearl freeze, fresh fruit cream freeze. Don't ask me what all these mean. I was overwhelmed, too.
Flavors: Oh boy. We'd both be here forever if I wrote them all out. Check out this online menu, then look at this photo:

A mere one page from Joy Yee's drinks menu

Hot/cold: Cold
Flavors tried: Green bean tapioca freeze, taro freeze
Lid style: Help! I was an inattentive boba-drinker. Christine, do you remember?
Smiles: Holy cow. The taro freeze was delicious. I've never been a huge fan of taro, but this freeze tasted a little like vanilla ice cream, with similar consistency. The boba was nearly perfect - chewy, not too soft, not too hard. No wonder it's Christine's regular order!

Taro freeze

The green bean tapioca freeze was a little more controversial. It did not come with the standard size boba, but rather the little itty-bitty tapioca, like the kind that comes in tapioca pudding. Hm, I thought, this I did not know. Maybe they should make tapioca size clearer on the menu? Anyhow, the freeze itself was VERY interesting. It wasn't thick like a milkshake - it was runnier, somewhere between Orange Julius and a milkshake, and grainy from the bits of green bean. If you're Chinese or Chinese American, you know what I'm talking about. Green bean, like red bean, is semi-sweet, and used a lot in Chinese desserts. (It's definitely not the same green bean used in American cuisine.) Plus, the green bean freeze was a beautiful concoction, complete with strawberries, watermelon, honeydew and cantaloupe. I mean really, just the prettiest boba I'd ever seen.

Green bean tapioca freeze

Scowls: Only because I'm nitpicky: the lighting in this place was hideous. I would never go out on a date here - you'd look awful. But if we're sticking to the boba, I have zero complaints.

Most memorable bo-ment: Walking back to the L with my boba and Christine and getting a call from my dad, that went like this:

Dad: So you're in Chicago, huh?

Cat: Yeah.

Dad: How long did it take?

Cat: Oh, about four hours.

Dad: So you drove non-stop?

Cat: No, I stopped to go to the restroom and stuff.

Dad: You can drive four hours without going to the restroom, can't you?

Cat: Well, some people can. I can't.

Dad: You could put on a diaper.

Cat: .......

Dad (in Mandarin): Isn't that what that NASA astronaut did...?

Overall rating: 9/10

A pricy addiction

I haven't done real math since calculus my freshman year of college. Basic arithmetic, though, I can deal with. Check it out:

I drink boba twice a week, low-ball estimate. Each boba costs $3-3.50. For calculation purposes, let's say $3.25. (In Berkeley, though, I used to get Quickly for $1.19. Boy, I sure miss Berkeley.)

$3.25 per boba x (2 boba/week) x (52 weeks/year) = $338 spent on boba each year

$338?! That's rent! Or a puppy! Or...

1. A digital camera
2. Gas for like, three months
3. A plane ticket to Hawaii
4. Three tandem skydives
5. Two iPod nanos
6. Food for a third-world country for...a long time

Oh my god, I am a terrible person.

When life gives you lemons...

Miami, Fla. - Warning: this is the first and ONLY time I've ever sent boba back. The Lan Pan-Asian Cafe Web site claims that the restaurant has gotten good reviews from several prominent newspapers. Maybe they were reviewing the food, not the boba. WE SHALL SEE. To be fair, though, the site does include some interesting tidbits about the origins of boba - first served at tea stands in front of Taiwanese schoolhouses. Well, allegedly. I don't know if I can trust a place that tries to serve me lemon cleaner disguised as lemon milk tea.

BOBA BRIEFING
Name: Lan Pan-Asian Cafe
Address: 8332 South Dixie Hwy. Miami, FL 33143
Phone: (305) 661-8141
Date visited: Saturday, Aug. 4, 2007
Goes by: Bubble tea
Price: $3.50
Form: Tea, blended fruit smoothies, milk tea
Flavors: TEAS: original milk tea, Thai iced tea, jasmine tea, green tea, taro, almond, Thai coffee, green tea latte. FRUIT SMOOTHIES: mango, strawberry-banana, strawberry, coconut, passion fruit, orange, apple, lychee, kiwi, pineapple, pina colada, cantaloupe, avocado, mixed berry, banana. MILK TEAS: black cherry, raspberry, strawberry, white/dark chocolate, mango, peach, lemon, orange, caramel
Hot/cold: Cold
Flavors tried: Lemon milk tea, original (black) milk tea, raspberry milk tea
Lid style: Hard plastic that comes with the straw hole already punched for you
Smiles: Well, I was smiling when I first walked in.
Scowls: Okay. First of all, the lemon milk tea (or "lemon milk tea"). Man, I'm so upset I can't even type in complete sentences. Don't order it. DON'T! It comes looking all innocuous - a pretty pale yellow, almost the color of banana cream pie. You just want to pat it on the head. Figures something so cute would be so lethal! After all, don't blowfish look like they're smiling until they KILL YOU?

Okay, but seriously. The lemon milk tea tastes like how you'd imagine lemon cleaner would taste. No trace of tea flavor, just really strong lemon...something. Lemon Fresh Pine-Sol, maybe? A big Strike One. I ended up sending it back for regular black milk tea, which was less repulsive. In all fairness, the black milk tea wasn't terrible. A little too fruity for my liking, but not bad. The raspberry milk tea wasn't gag-worthy either, but definitely too syrupy-sweet. Regardless of tea flavor, though, the tapioca was a little mushy. It could use some firming up. Strike Two.

Furthermore, I'm never in favor of putting ice in boba. Why? If you drink boba like a pro, you finish the tapioca and the tea at the same time. Ice messes with this proportion, and dilutes the tea flavor when you get near the end. Strike Three.
Most memorable bo-ment: Strolling around Bed Bath & Beyond afterwards, with boba and AAJA buddy Kristi Hsu, who kindly humored me and my boba obssession, and later endured a cab ride with World's Shadiest Cab Driver (WSCD) to get home. Thanks Kristi!
Overall rating: 5/10