Bubble tea in JB

It would be an understatement to say that I am a fan of bubble tea. Those days of running to chatime/xianyuxian or even driving to sydney cbd for boba+chao da ji pai after swimming in unigym are still vivid memories that many of us International House kakis held onto till now 🙂

But I stopped consuming pearls since many years ago in university when a piece of taiwan news caught the world stating that tapioca pearls were carcinogenic! So as chewy as the pearls were, it was forever off my radar.

But my crave for tea without pearls or toppings was never cured.

Off my head, I can come out with a few categories of tea commonly sold in bubble tea stores including:

1. Basic tea e.g. jasmine/oolong/green/4 seasons?/Pu-er

2. Fancy tea e.g. chrysanthemum oolong, orange jasmine, grapefruit oolong, sakura oolong, chrysanthemum pu-er

3. Milk tea – in the past bubble tea chains used to use condensed milk which is super duper unhealthy even though it tastes shiok but to suit the healthier taste of consumers (fake gimmicks) in the recent years, there are options for fresh milk with choices of fruits. Yam/matcha/oolong/jasmine/avocado/strawberry/melon anything that you can name it, they will have it!

4. Fruit tea – In the past, it was always fruit juice essence that funnily tasted like water to camel in a desert mixed with your choice of tea (red/green/jasmine). I started with sweet talk in Singapore during JC time (tasted like cough syrup!)–> KOI came into Singapore (I stopped drinking KOI after finding out how cheap it costs in their original taiwan store, RIPOFF in malaysia!) –> Chatime/85C degree/ Xian Yu Xian (Their 1L grapefruit green tea is the bomb!) / Tian Ren Ming Cha (genuine real brewed tea that accompanied many weeks of my taiwan NTUH attachment – their warm ginger milk tea ‘warms’ the tubes of esophagus/stomach/duodenum/ileum/jejunum haha) –> the numbers of new stalls are sth that I can no longer keep up like my escalating age

5. Yoghurt drink – To create some disillusioned fairy airy world for self-proclaimed health critics who secretly still can’t kick off their bubble tea addiction, they then came up with yoghurt drinks! Supposedly healthier, they offer toppings such as oats/purple rice/multigrains with fancy yoghurt. My first yoghurt drink was introduced by Oli in Sydney Haymarket, Chinatown when I went back for a visit. It was a damn long queue in a cold weather for sth called Yomie’s Rice X Yoghurt. Honestly it was refreshing and they have many flavours such as avocado/strawberry/honey yoghurt (which sounds healthy right?) and I guess other competitors were quick to pick up the trend and started introducing their version of ‘healthy’ yoghurt drink. Malaysians being apt with current trend has never failed to keep up with this. The Alley came up with some matcha purple rice which tasted so-so as the rice was stuck at the bottom of the cup when i sipped the matcha latte within one gulp. Yee’s yoghurt, another chinese brand was also recently introduced to Malaysia and I love its avocado yoghurt even though there is honestly no significant difference between other flavours. I tried their dragonfruit/lychee and I thought they tasted the same. But their melon and mango flavored yoghurt tasted so artificial because it was fruit essence (yucks) so you can go ahead and try….but at your own risk.

The last drink I tried was from Heytea (喜茶). They used to have a pop-up stall in city square but covid killed its business. I love Heytea because they used real fruits (or at least it appears to be) as you can see pre-packed fruits in a cup while they brew a wide selection of interesting tea. I finally got to get hold of a cup of 25% sugar grapefruit oolong yday and there was obviously a few chunks of grapefruit which tasted fruity and refreshing but there was unfortunately no oolong scent at all. It could be because of the scent being overpowered by the grapefruit or there was not much oolong tea to begin with. You can literally lie to me saying that it was grapefruit green tea which will be quite a dull choice i would think. But all in all, if you like refreshing tea with real fruits (not fruit syrup which is artificial), I think Heytea is underrated at the moment and I am just in awe with their wide selection of choices!

Ok there goes my brief review of bubble tea and hopefully I will learn how to take photos before downing everything the next time.