District of Boba

Rockville, MD - I've officially lived in DC for eight days, seven of which I spent thinking about Chinese food. Today, I finally did something about it and hopped on the red line to suburbia to check out A&J. Here's what happened:

• Got asked if I work at Whole Foods. (No. Minus 1.)
• Found good, cheap authentic Chinese food within a 15-mile radius of my apartment. (YES. Plus 10.)
• Found acceptable boba. (Eh, it wasn't awful. Plus 5.)
• Serendipitously passed a Petco on the way back to the metro. Because Petcos are hard to come by the city, this also gets +10. The kitty Patty gets a new scratching post while we wait for her old one to make its way from a moving truck in LA. Patty might give this +45.

Back to the boba. To be clear, the boba at A&J definitely doesn't make my Top 3 best boba of all time list (which, btw, I still stand by, three years later). But it's decent, reasonably priced at $2.55 and the tapioca is prepared with some degree of expertise. I give it a C+ overall.

And as an added bonus, no one wants to sit by the girl on the metro who's clutching a scratching post with one hand and a cup of boba with the other. Personal space is priceless. + infinity.

I lost track of the math, but to sum it up, it was a positive day. I kind of like D.C. Well, let's not get carried away. D.C is all right. Could be worse.

100% bomb

Rowland Heights - Until recently, Half & Half was like an urban legend - much talked about, yet never reviewed by the self-anointed Boba Queen. I remedied this a couple weekends ago while showing a college buddy around LA. And let me tell you, Half & Half is as good as they say. Their specialty, iced milk with honey boba, is a twist on standard milk tea and it is BOMB. Frothy and pleasantly sweet.

But I'm not going to lie. The best part about it was the cup. It's shorter and stouter than most boba cups. Kind of like the Danny DeVito of boba.