Boba Tea?

[NYEngineer]

I DVR all sorts of shows and watch them when the is bad.
Hot Rod Garage is one of my favorites. Lucky Costa and Alex Taylor crack me up. Anyway, Alex turned Lucky on to a drink called Boba. He liked it so now every time they need to test a car, they take a Boba break. I was curious about it and asked my wife if she knew what it was. She had no idea. We looked it up and it’s tea or juice with these balls made from tapioca starch that you drink up and they pop in your mouth. We found a place ten minutes away that was rated five stars so we took a ride and gave it a shot.
We tried orange tea and strawberry tea. Both were fantastic. I’m looking forward to trying a coffee drink with brown sugar bobas in it.
Anyone else tried this?
Lucky on Hot Rod Garage cracks me up the way he goes on about it.

 

[AutoMechanic]

We have a place around here that has it. My sister and her family love boba tea they were the ones who introduced us to it. Personally for me I’ll drink the drink but keep the boba. When it hits my mouth it just gives a nasty flavor to me so pass. But everyone likes different things I’m the only one in my family that doesn’t care for it.

 

[NYEngineer]

There’s a few different types of boba as well.

 

[CKN]

It's been a thing for several years.

 

[99Saturn]

I'm a fan of Taro, but it's been quite a few years since i have had it.

 

[Oillover]

It's been a thing for several years.

+1
Google indicates since the early 80's.

Also, the "Boba" or "Pearls" dont' actually "pop" in your mouth.
Rather, they have a chewy/gelatinous texture.

 

[Pew]

Been around for a while [decades] but the past few years have really blown up the Boba popularity.

It's crucial to find a place that uses real fruit as well. Cheap places use powder mix.

 

[Pepperjunkie]

Haven't had it but my daughter asked me to get her some the other day.
4 pack at Walmart was 9.50, some mango flavor. I'm not interested in trying it.

 

[NYEngineer]

The place we hit up made everything fresh. My wife, being from the south, is a drink snob. She said this was great.
It was really delicious.

 

[Oillover]

The place we hit up made everything fresh. My wife, being from the south, is a drink snob. She said this was great.
It was really delicious.

Lol, I'm sure it was.
Do yourself a favor and don't read the nutrition information (if you care about calories/fat/carbs etc.).

 

[Enlight]

It originated in Taiwan (where my folks are from). It's been around for at least 25 years in the States, but I think more people are getting exposed to it now as older immigrant populations are moving out of the city centers and into suburbs (and the businesses that cater to them follow). Also, the younger folks are into all things Asian like K-pop now. Not so much when I was coming up. I remember selling them during a high school fundraiser for our Asian club and they were a big hit.

 

[y_p_w]

Sure I've had it over the years living in the San Francisco Bay Area. But boba as an ingredient can go in many different beverages. Asian style milk tea is the most common, but I've seen them in juice drinks where there might be something like an extra charge for the pearls. The other thing is that a lot of the places that serve these drinks will heat seal a cover on top of the cup such that it's hermetically sealed until it's pierced with a straw.

I've even made it myself at home, and my wife has ordered these boba drink kits. A few times I just got the pearls in bulk packages from an Asian supermarket and those were fairly simply to prep by boiling them. But they have to be consumed within about 8 hours after they cool down or they turn into sludge. I've seen boba in cans where they're made differently to survive being in liquid that long.

And they're all over the place in Berkeley - probably because it's popular with all the Asian and Asian-American students.

 

[y_p_w]

It originated in Taiwan (where my folks are from). It's been around for at least 25 years in the States, but I think more people are getting exposed to it now as older immigrant populations are moving out of the city centers and into suburbs (and the businesses that cater to them follow). Also, the younger folks are into all things Asian like K-pop now. Not so much when I was coming up. I remember selling them during a high school fundraiser for our Asian club and they were a big hit.

By now it's been adopted all over Asia and expat Asian communities around the world. But not just boba (which is optional) but places that serve stuff like Hong Kong style milk tea and various styles of Japanese

I think the biggest chain in the US that serves those kind of drinks (which don't necessarily include tapioca pearls) is Quickly (from Taiwan). There was some controversy a few years ago because of a San Francisco Supervisor who apparently tried to solicit a bribe to grease the skids for someone who wanted a business permit to operate a Quickly location, but then this guy went to the FBI. The guy thought that he might help him as a normal constituent service.

Former SF Supervisor Ed Jew fighting return to jail

Former San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew is now fighting his state sentence for perjury which he is supposed to serve in county jail.

abc7news.com

Jew was convicted on federal bribery charges of trying to extort 80,000 from the owners of Quickly tapioca drink shops who had permit problems with the city.

Security video in Jew's Chinatown flower shop captured him accepting a bribe -- $40,000 in cash.

He didn't realize the money man was working for the FBI.

I mentioned the sealed cups. I remember visiting an Asian country back in 2008 where I saw one employee at a restaurant just collecting all the excess material after the sealing machine had cut it off.

​

 

[JHZR2]

We’ve been getting these at Vietnamese restaurants for 20 years now. Sometimes blended, sometimes on ice.

In the last few years a LOT of Asian desert and bubble tea places have opened up. But the product is nothing new.

 

[Kira]

Boba, you say? A few cafe's around me had signs which read, "Bubble Tea". That's all the product exposure I ever had.
If some flavors are good; great!
The staggered pile of Boba spheres in the photo above reminds me of OO buckshot.

Balls of tapioca starch, flavored with Heaven-only-knows-what, doesn't intrigue me. The world's food industries are all too willing to embrace weird chemicals and vibrant colorings. The more popular/recreational, the more I steer clear.

It's been a thing for several years.

So long, some of the "Bubble tea" signs have come down. The 'touch screen' of foods you can live without.

 

[mr_boring]

Used to have an employee that made killer fried rice and spring rolls. When we did potluck dinners, we bugged her about making those every single time. One evening she comes in with a few flavors of Boba Tea. I tried a small sampling of each type, and that was the end of my Boba Tea experience.

It was kinda like flavored semi-dried mucus. Not my 'cup of tea'. There were a couple of people that did claim to like Boba and they raved about it.

 

[vavavroom]

Bubble tea, bubble gut! Probably bubble brains, too.

 

[TeeCee]

We buy Boba tea from Sam's Club, multi pack that has a strawberry lemonade and mango flavor. Pretty solid. Gotta be better for you than sodas I'm trying to kick.

 

[vavavroom]

We buy Boba tea from Sam's Club, multi pack that has a strawberry lemonade and mango flavor. Pretty solid. Gotta be better for you than sodas I'm trying to kick.

You may be surprised by what you find if you compare the nutrition labels. It's shocking.

 

[tcp71]

The 'Bubble Tea cafe' fad was about 10 years ago here. Other than a few final holdouts they're gone now. This is one last holdout nearby. Been there 15 years or more.