If you recall, pearl milk tea was on my top five beverages list.Also goes by the name of boba and bubble tea. I personally prefer the usage of pearl milk tea, or PMT for short. Boba's fine too, when I want to save a syllable. You'll also hear me say "pearl tea," you know, 'cause I'm somewhat lactose intolerant. Bubble tea, however, does not fly with me. Who even coined this term? I hear this the most on the east coast. If someone can enlighten me as to why people call it bubble tea, I'd like to hear your explanation. (Just looked it up. According to Wikipedia, "The word bubble refers to "bubbling," the process by which certain types of bubble tea are made, and not the actual tapioca balls." LAME, the entry for "Pearl milk tea" is redirected to "Bubble tea.") Pearl milk tea is at least the literal translation of its Chinese name, and boba is a phonetic translation of a variation of the name. What is "buoba" anyway? Is that Taiwanese or is it just another Chinese name for it. (EDIT: Haha, apparently it's slang for "big breasts" in Taiwanese.) Oddly enough, the PMT I've had in Taiwan wasn't even that great even though it originated there.
Whenever I order PMT, I always get the regular, plain one. That is how I judge the quality of the entire shop. I don't care how good your green milk tea is. If your PMT sucks, you suck. So where do I like to get my fix? Well, when I'm in South Bay, more often than not I go to Fantasia. They're always speedy and they maintain a strong level of quality. After that I go to Q-Cup and Ten Ren for variety. Yes, I can get tired of Fantasia.
Fantasia is very good, but to nitpick, it tends to be a little too milky and a bit bitter like coffee. I don't drink coffee so I'm only extrapolating the smell of coffee to the taste of it. I prefer my beverages to be thin. I find them more refreshing that way. For example, when I (used to) drink milk, I always drink skim milk - 2% and beyond is kinda gross. I always get pulp free orange juice because bits of pulp is not refreshing, and I am not a fan of smoothies. I've probably alienated all five of my readers in this last paragraph, but let's move on.
My favorite PMT was back when the Ten Ren in Cupertino Village was run by this middle-aged Chinese lady who would make every drink to order. She would even taste the mixture (with a clean spoon!) before deeming it worthy of my taste buds. Sure, it would take a while, but it was worth it. Sometimes when I lay awake at night, I can still taste the tea. At one of my parents' friend's house, the grandma made homemade PMT that was amazing. She could open her own store and blow Fantasia out of the water.
Next: Bad pearl milk tea and the secret to making amazing pearl milk tea.
4 comments:
hahaha, you know i've had tea from that lady at ten ren's. we saw this huge line at ten rens and after watching that lady put so much time and effort into making each tea, we decided we had to wait in line to try it.
honestly though it wasn't worth the wait.
could be my memory hyping it up to be better than it was, but it wasn't until after the people running ten ren switched that i eventually started getting pearl tea from fantasia and q-cup, so i maintain that the lady's pearl tea was still better.
maybe the line was so long that she couldn't be bothered to give you the best that she normally reserved for me. perhaps it's better this way, so that you never taste the disappointment that is all other pearl teas, those that could never live up to the holy grail of teas.
wait i ALSO remember that ten ren lady and her magically delicious tea. i also remember how you could also randomly buy tea eggs from her. but i agree about this weird east coast "bubble tea" colloquialism. though at my undergrad, bubbles = pearls where workers would often ask, "would you like extra bubbles?"
-tracy
did the worker then proceed to blow air bubbles through the straw and then hand it to you?
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