Bubble Tea For Everyone!

(Unique Tea House)

(315) 422-7385
131 Marshall St
Syracuse, NY 13210

November 22,2008

Bubble tea…sounds Interesting huh? I thought so. My friend (Jessica of course, my foodie partner in crime) has been telling me about bubble tea for about a year. She explained it but I never really understood the concept. To help you understand bubble tea a little more here’s a brief history of bubble tea:

Bubble tea (or Boba tea) originated in the 1980’s in Taiwan. Bubble tea is a tea drink that contains tapioca pearls. Now I always thought that it was from the tapioca pearls that bubble tea took its name, but actually it is the “bubbling” process which the tea is made by that gives the tea its name. Bubble tea can be made hot or cold and is sipped through a straw. The size of the pearl determines the girth of the strawJ. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_tea)

Okay so now that you know what bubble tea is you now probably want to know where you can get some. I would highly recommend Unique Tea House! I went on a late Saturday night with some friends. Now, right there is one GREAT benefit to UTH, its open really late! ( I pretty sure till 2 am on the weekends, call to make sure though) It’s a really cute place, kinda hard to find though. UTH is right above Blue Monkey Café, so you gotta look for a door that leads to a stairway. UTH has a really great Asian décor, from the arch ways to the drums, and even anime toys and key chains. They also provide a pretty large variety of drinks. The first time I went I got the coconut milk hot bubble tea and I really loved the flavor…the pearls on the other hand, took some getting use to.

The pearls are black and when I watched them go up the straw, honestly it made my skin crawl. But they didn’t taste too bad. Actually they don’t have much of a flavor, the pearls are mostly there for a texture effect. If I had to describe that texture it would be ummm…. Chewy very chewy! Like a mix between raw pizza dough, gum, and a cheese curd… I mean those are all the things that came to mind when eating my first one. The pizza dough would make the most sense I guess becase the pearls are made of starch. (Which I at first got confused with yeast… hahah… no yeast)

This last time though I ordered the papaya milk hot bubble tea. OMG it was soooo good! I couldn’t stop drinking it. And to top it off we all loved our waiter he was a great sport dealing with all of us girls that were in definite rare form.

“Now that that Korean Ginger tea—is it spicy?”—Karen

“Spicy like WASABI” –Me

Overall Unique Tea House get 2 thumbs up…and I can see it becoming a definte regular hang out… especially for the winter.