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

"It's better to be too soft than too hard"

Birmingham, Mich. - I didn't want to set the tone of this blog with a dirty joke, but what else would you have me do with an 800-pound gorilla in the room?

The reference, of course, is to the consistency of the boba at Sy Thai Cafe, which serves surprisingly (but not unpleasantly) soft tapioca balls.

BOBA BRIEFING
Name: Sy Thai Cafe
Address: 315 Hamilton Row, Birmingham, MI 48009
Phone: (248) 258-9830
Date visited: Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007
Goes by: Bubble drinks. They call the bubbles "Tropical Tapioca Pearls." How bold!
Price: $3.25
Form: Fruit smoothies, but you can ask for tapioca in Thai iced tea
Flavors: Mango Breeze, Strawberry Surf, Watermelon Wave, Green Apple Mist, Pineapple Sunrise, Lychee Splash, Peach Sunset
Hot/cold: Cold. Can you imagine a warm strawberry smoothie? Eeeshk.
Flavors tried: Thai iced tea, Mango Breeze
Lid style: You gotta poke a hole in a hard plastic lid (only if you get it to go - it comes in a glass if you're dining in), but it's already halfway punched out for you. None of the silly plastic wrap that gives boba rookies so much trouble.
Smiles: I was very impressed with the mango! Very smooth, light and tasty. Its uber-mangoness is not for mango-haters, though. The Thai iced tea is pretty standard-tasting. The tapioca is VERY soft and chewy, which I personally like, but others may frown upon.

Thai iced tea+tapioca = :)


Thai iced tea


Mango Breeze

Scowls: Perhaps a demi-scowl to the fact that the tapioca was still slightly warm when the drinks came. Also, call me old fashioned, but I still think boba should come in its purest form, milk tea. Which they don't do.
Most memorable bo-ment: My partner in crime, roommate and fellow Free Press intern Sarah Welliver, made an egregious error: she attempted to take my boba from atop my car as I was trying to lock her out of my car. Or perhaps because I was trying to lock her out of my car...Interesting. I sure showed her!

Sarah and Mango Breeze

Overall rating: 8/10