Pearl Milk Tea - Part II

At Berkeley, there are a lot of PMT choices, but most of them are crap. TapEx, Quickly, and Sweetheart all suck. I normally get it from Lotus House, but even theirs is not that great. It tastes a bit powdery. I did recently try the PMT from Mandarin House, located in the Asian Ghetto. The tea was probably the best of the ones I've had in Berkeley. It kinda reminded me of the homemade one I had all those years ago. The pearls unfortunately were largely flavorless, but I will have to try it again. I seldom go to 99 Ranch in El Cerrito, but when I do I always get one from the Ten Ren there. You would think with all the Asian kids around, someone would open a quality pearl tea shop and charge the normal price of $2.50, but no, they get Quickly's 'cause it's cheap, as in cheap and full of suck! (EDIT: Tried Mandarin House again, and it wasn't that great. Maybe I'll try it again when it's less busy. I recently discovered the EmeryBay Public Market and the pearl tea there tasted a bit like Verde's. Not bad.)

The PMT situation in Princeton is even worse. It's been a couple years, so maybe they've improved. I ate at Tiger Noodles quite often, and the PMT there was only good enough to ward off withdrawal. I was so desperate for some good PMT that I once bought a mix from an Asian supermarket. Needless to say it disappointed. It was really bad. For some reason it tasted like peach. Yeah, it tasted fruity! The pearls were surprisingly ok though, so I ended up just adding the leftover pearls to Coke and that worked out pretty well.

So what makes a good pearl milk tea? I'll give you a second to pull out a pad and pencil. You might want to take some notes. Ok, ready? The most important thing is you have to be able to taste the tea. TapEx and Quickly taste more like chocolate milk than anything else. The tea should be sweet of course, but it can't be so sweet you get sick of it or that it overpowers the tea. The pearls should be sweet both on the outside and on the inside. They should be a bit chewy, but not overly so that it becomes abrasive, like Sweetheart's. Well, there you have it, the secret to amazing pearl milk tea - must taste like tea, be kinda sweet, and have sweet, somewhat chewy pearls! Groundbreaking, I know. Haha, sorry, I can't really describe taste so that's the best I can do.

Oh and JK, I don't lay awake at night thinking about pearl milk tea. At night I go to sleep because it's late and I'm tired.

One day I will open the In-N-Out of pearl tea. It will contain a single menu item - "Pearl Milk Tea." But if you're in the know, you can order special items such as a "4x4," which will be four pearl milk teas stacked on top of each other with a single giant straw that will go through all four containers. Or, if you'd like, you can order the pearl milk tea with "fish eggs" if you want the smaller pearls. "Animal style" will also be available, but I don't know why you'd want grilled onions in your tea. And lastly, if you order "bubble tea," the worker will blow soap bubbles in your face, and while you're distracted, punch you in the head.