A boba-filled vacation

My recent trip to LA made me long for simpler times, when I lived in California and could roll out of bed and find good boba anywhere. These days, I roll out of bed...into the boba-less abyss known as DC. Here, efforts to find even passable boba are fruitless. Here, many people don't even know what boba is. Uncivilized.

Anyway, back to happier thoughts. My friend took me to CoCo, which I'd never been to before. It's in the Sawtelle neighborhood of LA, which is one of my favorite places to eat because it has almost all of the things I love: ramen, sushi, izakaya, shaved ice, banh mi and, of course, boba. I could easily spend a week there and be happy eating something different and delicious every meal, then have shaved ice or boba for dessert. Or boba for breakfast. Or as an appetizer...or a nightcap...

Part of CoCo's extensive menu

CoCo is good. It's a pretty standard quality boba place that you'd find in LA and the Bay Area. They have the normal tapioca, plus the pudding and grass jelly options for most drinks. I myself am a boba purist and stick to the bare-bones black milk tea with tapioca for two reasons: 1) Milk tea (either black or green tea) is still my favorite boba base. I've always loved the flavor of a good milk tea, and I prefer it over smoothie-based boba, where the liquid is so icy that it makes the tapioca harden. 2) I think it's important to stay consistent and try the same thing at every boba place, if I am to review it fairly. CoCo's black milk tea with boba is solid -- good tea flavor and good chewy (if a bit soft) tapioca. I really enjoyed it. Plus, it was the first time in six months that I'd had good boba (the last time was when I went home for Christmas and had Verde, one of my favorite boba places in North America), so it was extra tasty.

The real boba high point of my trip, though, was Half & Half, my favorite boba in Southern California. I usually get the iced milk with honey boba, their specialty (this is one of the few exceptions to my milk tea rule, which is really more of a philosophy), but this time I splurged and added pudding too. I was on vacation, after all. Then I went to the park and read, and later that night had great sushi. All in all, it was a fabulous day in which boba was just one of several highlights.

Half & Half, my favorite boba in Southern California -- and one of my top 3 in the Northern Hemisphere

The end of the boba drought

New York, NY - I haven't had good boba since I was in California over Christmas, so when I made a brief trip to NYC for a friend's baby shower, I of course had to indulge in some boba before I returned to DC, the land of no boba. We ducked into Vivi Bubble Tea near Wall Street, where I got the green milk tea. It won't be making my list of Best Boba Ever (btw that list should be updated to include Half & Half) but it's definitely respectable. The tapioca is good and the milk tea isn't too sweet. My favorite part is the scary face they put on the lid, see photo below.

Menu

Buy 5, get 1 free!

The face any sane person would make when returning to the land of no boba (DC).

Giant boba

The boba gods must be smiling down on me today. First, I woke up to an email from my sister, who sent me this photo from Amsterdam:

When I asked her if she tried it, she replied like the true Northern California seasoned boba-drinker she is: Hell no.


A few hours later, I found out that Bubble Tea Licious, a boba truck, was parked a few blocks away from my work, so I had to check it out. By the way, I started this blog, called Bobalicious, in 2007. Bubble Tea Licious started in 2008. Just saying.

First thoughts: This boba is unnecessarily huge. I snapped a pic of it next to my 32-ounce Nalgene, for scale. I put my mini-Vaseline on the other side of it to further emphasize its hugeness. This is what that poor woman in Indonesia must've felt like when the doctor handed her her 19-pound newborn.

Additional thoughts: This is probably the best boba I've had in D.C., which is like saying it's the fastest blind, three-legged greyhound out of all the blind, three-legged greyhounds. Don't get me wrong, no one can serve up a bland sandwich (or "blandwich," as I like to say) better than this city, but when it comes to boba, it's a sad, sad desert. Bubble Tea Licious's black milk tea is a little too sweet, but the tapioca has good consistency and the flavor of the milk tea is decent. I'd give it an A- by D.C. standards, which is a B- by normal standards. Also, it cost $5, which is ridiculous. I'd much prefer a NORMAL-sized cup that costs no more than $3.50, per normal boba standards.

In short: Slightly above average, yet incredibly expensive. D.C. in a nutshell.

Bad news boba

The good news is the sandwich place I go to near work started serving boba. The bad news is it's not good. The good news is they also started serving bibimbap (it's a deli owned by a Korean couple). The bad news is the boba still sucks.

I give up on boba in D.C. It's just hopeless. I wish Half & Half would come here. And, as long as I'm wishing for things that'll never happen, I also wish In-n-Out would come here.

This is what bad boba looks like.

McBoba

I missed this exciting news when it came out last summer: McDonald's in Germany and Thailand are now serving boba, and it's being branded as the "McBubble." Personally, I think the "McBoba" has a better ring to it, but what do I know? I've just been the world's foremost expert on boba since 2007 -- which, as my two loyal readers know, is the year I started this blog.

I wonder if McDonald's in the United States will ever do this. I can't say I'm dying to try what I assume is a bastardized version of my favorite non-alcoholic beverage. But it would give boba some nice mainstream attention.

By the way, Google tried to correct my search of "McBubble" to "McDouble." No, fool, I meant McBubble. But that rhyme has the potential to make a great rap song, no? Or a fun jingle for McDonald's at the very least.

Thanks to a co-worker for tipping me off to this story. Co-worker shall remain nameless, lest I embarrass them by linking their name to my boba rants.

Boba nostalgia

Some reassuring boba news out of Southern California: in 2012, nearly three times as many boba joints opened than closed in San Gabriel Valley, according to LA Weekly.

"[This] once again proves that the tapioca ceiling hasn't yet been hit. What the malt shoppe was to American teens in the 1950's, the teahouse/boba shop is to Asian American teens in this millennium."

This not only intensifies my nostalgia for San Gabriel Valley and its endless boba options, but makes me wonder if I should seriously consider getting into the boba business here in D.C. I'm telling you, the competition would be nonexistent. The last time I had boba nearby, it was at Song Que, a Vietnamese deli in Eden Center -- which is great for Vietnamese food, but not great at all for boba. Which makes sense, since good boba is always at teahouses operated by Taiwanese people and not at Vietnamese, Thai or other Asian restaurants that co-opt boba into their menus but never get it quite right.

Milk tea at Song Que - not terrible, but not in the same league as teahouses in the Bay Area and Southern California

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.