Boba, Bubble Tea, Tapioca Pearls, and other synonyms that go with Milk Tea

[Paul le Fou]

Milk tea with Boba. It is delicious, and the best. How do you like your boba?

Taro and Thai iced tea are my favorite go-to flavors that you can get almost anywhere, but I like most of them alright - almond and coconut are other standouts. But there was this place by my old house that had a bunch of other flavors and let you mix, so 1. they had cinnamon, which whips ass, and 2. you could mix it with anything. So Cinnamon-vanilla, cinnamon-ginger, cinnamon-thai, cinnamon-taro, I tried 'em all and more and it's still my favorite boba place, even if the boba themselves are a bit softer there than I like them. The flavor selection and customization just couldn't be beat.

I typically get half-ice and somewhere between quarter- and half-sweetness, and double boba in my milk teas.

 

[gogglebob]

I enjoy bubble tea, but I usually get bored with the "bubbles" before I complete the drink. I like having the little tapioca blobs, but if I am out of liquid, I am not going to bother with the remaining balls. This is in stark contrast to something like a fajita, where, if I am terrible about proportioning out my fillings to tortillas, I can and will eat either remaining ingredient on its lonesome.

ALSO I love Taro, but I have been trying to describe the flavor to people who have not had it for years. "Try the Taro! I love it! It tastes like... dough?"

 

[JBear]

So, I never tried boba before my current SO, but she's all about the boba, so I have it all the time now. Conveniently, in the time since we began dating, our city went from one boba place to literally a dozen, so we're now embarrassed for choice. I don't know if this is indicative of larger trends or just a thing here, but I'm not complaining either way.

As for what I like, honestly I'll fuck with pretty much any permutation? For a base drink I'm likely to go for something fruity more often than not, most often with mango, but other times I'm in more of a matcha mood. For the added bits, I like taro, I like tapioca, I like grass jelly, I like cheese foam, I like popping bubbles-- they each pair better with certain things. Probably my favourites I've had thus far are a red velvet tea with tapioca pearls and a mango fruit tea with popping watermelon bubbles.

Oh, I do have one thing I'm always the same on, though: fuck ice. Just completely fuck it. It ruins the texture, and then I'm left chasing pearls around an empty cup full of half-melted ice cubes at the end. It's just miserable. I like my milk tea cool sometimes, but not if it takes ice to get it there. If I go to a place and they won't serve me my boba without ice, then I'm unlikely to ever go back.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Cheese foam! I like that stuff. The sweet, cream-cheesey one. What I don't like is the salty crema. I tried to like it, I really did, and I just couldn't get into it. The cheese foam is already difficult enough to enjoy alongside the boba, and the same texture with a strong salty flavor usually just clashes unpleasantly. I even had an ube salty crema that just didn't work for me.

For me, the popping bubbles are OK if they work, but it feels like half the time they dissolve before they can get to my mouth, or just fall apart like a tissue, rather than give me a nice "pop" texture and burst of taste. But I'm all about the regular brown sugar boba/tapioca all the time, so I don't really mess around with other stuff. They're good, don't get me wrong, I just like the regular boba the best. Crystal boba are the second best because I like the chewy texture even if they have no flavor (and yet are somehow more expensive??)

As for ice, I agree. I usually get half ice in mine, which is a standard option around here. It helps keep the drink cool but mostly melts away before it becomes a problem. If there's an option for less, I might get that too. I haven't tried no ice in a long time, I should give it another go.

 

[Daikaiju]

I like it when i can get, which is not often.

 

[Büge]

ALSO I love Taro, but I have been trying to describe the flavor to people who have not had it for years. "Try the Taro! I love it! It tastes like... dough?"

I describe taro as tasting like Oreo cookies.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I've always thought it tasted like cookies too, though Oreo isn't what comes to mind. But now I need to try some oreos alongside a taro boba and see...