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 te... (read more) 4.0/5.0
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&pizza Rose and champagne cotton candy: This is a 2-serving-size cotton candy snack from &Pizza, available in two different flavors: rose and champagne. They taste slightly different from one another, but neither are particularly close to their intended flavor—the Rose is more mild than the champagne, but both taste of pure sugar. Not particularly distinguishable from standard carnival cotton candy. Expensive, at $5 each. 2.5/5.0
sugar dessert pizza rose champagne cotton candy 2.5
Purple Kow Rosie Oolong Tea with Brown Sugar Jelly: Somehow, I kept finding myself at this bubble tea shop in Berkeley, likely because of its proximity to the downtown BART station. Purple Kow serves its bubble tea in "chubby" cups (essentially stout buckets) and uses organic milk products for its milk teas. I think they're a little too proud of this fact given that the last few milk teas I've had have been overwhelmingly milky to the point that you feel like you're having sweetened milk. Even with the "micro sugar option," it was too swee... (read more) 2.0/5.0
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Tiger Sugar Brown sugar boba milk tea with cream mousse: Stopped by the Tiger Sugar stand on Main Street in Flushing on a Friday night and waited in line for about 15 minutes to get a cup of the famed brown sugar boba milk tea with cream mousse. The Flushing location is the first in the US from Taiwanese chain Tiger Sugar; there is an additional spot now in Sunset Park, and the latest will be opening in Chinatown this Saturday, so all major Chinese neighborhood across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens are covered. I actually didn't know too much a... (read more) 3.5/5.0
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Yifang Matcha Brown Sugar Bubble Tea: I was delighted to come across the Taiwanese bubble tea shop Yifang in Shin Okubo, the Koreatown of Shinuku in Tokyo. I wish I were able to read the menu of fruit tea options, but I had to go by the pictures and decided to try their matcha latte with brown sugar, a drink that has a fixed amount of sugar (unlike some other menu items, where you can adjust how sweet you'd like it to be). I did find the drink to be sweet for my taste, but the combination of bitter matcha with sweet brown suga... (read more) 4.0/5.0
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