PaTea Brown sugar oolong milk tea with boba: I really love living in NYC, but one thing that was missing for me was a mom-and-pop super-asian bubble tea shop, the kind that has an overwhelming number of flavors that isn’t a major chain like Gong Cha or Coco. Those types of shops are omnipresent in the Bay Area, but not so much here. However, that gap has now been filled by PaTea, a very small bubble tea shop a few blocks away from Union Square. There, they have the “chubby” bucket-sized bubble tea cups in a variety of milk and fruit tea flavors. I ordered their most popular: a brown sugar oolong milk tea with boba. At 30% sweetness, it was sweet but really satisfying, reminding me a lot of milk tea in Taiwan. The texture of the boba was also excellent - easily the best I’ve found in NYC. And the shop has a lot of charm, with post-it art from customers covering its walls. I’ll definitely be back. 4.0/5.0

recommended nyc bubbletea drinks milktea chinese asian patea brown sugar oolong milk tea boba 4.0