A new fad is running around town... or the world rather. Pearl Tea. The first I ever encountered it was 7 years ago, which doesn't strike me as very new. Nonetheless, in KL it appears to be. They say that it's originally from Taiwan. I was introduced to the sweet drink in Japan, in Nagoya, right in the middle of Osu Kannon district, where a tiny colourful shop was crying out to me: Come and drink! And I did... I even got a stamp card, yes, stamp cards were already popular 7 years ago...
Pearl tea is tea, possibly in the broader sense since some of it is more watered down fruit juice, but you do get your black tea, green tea, red tea, what have you, mixed with milk and some sugar, and the pearls. Ah, pearls...
Over here they also call it bubble tea, why I am not really sure. Those bubbles are not bubbles, pearls gets a bit closer already though. They are small balls, squishy, chewy, brownish, and with hardly any taste, if anything a little starchy maybe, but the tea and sweetener overlays it all. Why bubbles? Well, I guess ball tea would not have found many enthusiasts, not among the regular customers at least.
I've seen the same kind of thing in various places. A Hong Kong style eatery near Leicester Square has them, also to pick up while walking past. Or an Asia supermarket in Shoreditch that replaced an architecture firm that, I hope, moved to better quarters, has one of those sealing machines apparently essential for preparing the drink. It's just not the same if you don't have it in a sealed cup, with an over-sized straw with which you can dig around the cup to hunt down the last of the ... well, balls. That it would be easier to get to them if you did not have to allow for the angle of the straw in addition to detecting the pearls among the ice cubes is of no consequence.
Here in KL you have other choices as well, in case those little balls are not your cup of tea, no pun intended. Well, just a little maybe. Anyway, here you can also get grass-jelly, or sometimes something that particular shop called sky pearls, same thing just in tiny and white, and strangely tangy in the aftertaste. There are a few more choices, all some version or other of something squishy and jellylike. I stick to my pearls. The other jellies so far were just too, well, jellyish and soft. I want it chewy!
As for variety, there are plenty. Aside from various kinds of tea you have a multitude of fruit flavours to choose from, some also do a more milkshake kinda thing, I tried one with yoghurt once, was quite alright. I still come back to the good and simple red or black milk tea with pearls. It's the simple things that mark the quality of a shop, don't you think? Been doing the same thing once with tomato soup, and am always on the hunt of the best plain coffee in whichever town I am in. And Starbucks is certainly not anywhere in the running... but I'm digressing. So, good old milk tea pearls, that's my way to go... and over here, don't forget to have them tone down the sugar level, they seem to love it sweet, but it kills the taste...
These kinds of shops are suddenly very popular here. I don't know why now, since the thing has been around for a while, if even Japan managed to sport it's own shops seven years ago already... But here they suddenly pop up everywhere. There's one cafe nearby the office that has turned into one of those shops, and now you have people queuing to get their drink. In another area not far from here, the same row of shops has four of them, all trying to do their own thing, but essentially ending up all the same. Just that one of them has cool green plastic chairs, the next one the name of the biggest chain of these around here, another is focussing more on deserts with those jelly things on ice rather than the drink, but you still get it of course, and the last one has cute little cubicle stools of some kind of brownish red in various shades... It's all the same to me, well, apart from the chairs of course. And people queue like mad, particularly at the bigger chain shop. I suppose, name is important after all.
Now, I do like this kind of stuff, on occasion. It's like tea and desert in one, drink and chew, what more can you want? So, is it wrong that I crave some sourplum drink just now?
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