I've had boba twice since returning to the States, both of which were predictably anticlimactic. The first was at Quickly in Berkeley's Asian Ghetto - what we Cal students and alumni (omg I'm an alum! How depressing.) say when referring to the cluster of cheap, mostly Asian restaurants in Southside, less than a 5-minute walk from the UC Berkeley main gate. As most NorCal-ers know, Quickly is a cheap knockoff for real boba, mostly because it's so inexpensive ($0.59 for milk tea w/o boba, $1.19 w/ boba), we tend to excuse its mediocrity as a trade-off for price.
To be honest, I never really had a problem with Quickly, probably because I like my milk tea on the sweet side. Also, I like money, and I spend a lot less of it when I get boba from Quickly instead of some other boba place, which would charge around $2.50 for the same thing. You're probably thinking, "Okay, so you save $1.31, you bargain-hunting boba-boozer, who cares?" BUT consider this:
- Well, first check out that alliteration. "Bargain-hunting boba-boozer," I feel, is one of my finer literary creations on this site, which should tell you a thing or two about the quality of writing here.
- If you factor in just HOW MUCH boba I drink, $1.31 definitely adds up. If I spent $1.19 every time I drank boba (and there have been times I've shamefully spent more than $3...check past entries), I'd likely be able to afford all kinds of things, including some underhanded scheme to buy my way into being named CEO of some boba company.
