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
3 comments:
haha what would i do if someone took me to joy yee's on a date-date....
don't ask :X
okay!
1. if you get the boba to go, the lid is clear plastic, with a premade X for poking the straw through.
2. i almost died laughing (again) at your bo-ment. ugh thinking back, your dad's humor + stomach full of boba, koreanbbq, and tofu = pain
3. thanks for the shout out casalineeee :)
With writing like this, maybe you have a future as a food critic alongside medical reporter. But what would you do if someone had a heart attack from the best boba ever (BBE)?
I also gotta say I love the word "bo-ment."
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