The Alley Assam Milk Tea – The Alley

Today I’m picking up some (supposedly) limited merchandise at Honey and Butter (if you know, you know). I’ve never actually been in the store or stopped by to try their macarons, but other than supposedly they’re good, they’re known for their super cute designs. Even so, I’m not going to wait in the long line for a macaron too cute to eat, so the good thing was I could just text to pick up my merchandise and leave, ha! My dad accompanied me today, and since we went around lunch time, we had ramen at Silverlake Ramen. After that, we went to The Alley, because obviously since I’m at Spectrum I needed to get a drink. My original plan was to go get my pick and then a drink anyway, so it all worked out. 🙂

Weirdly enough, I could have sworn I would have enough points for a free drink, but when I went to scan my card to see my loyalty account, it didn’t recognize it and the machine has a little hard time with the card. Am I doing something wrong? Anyways, afterwards, it did recognize my account since I put in my email and it logged the points in with my previous points, but when I went to verify my “new” card, I saw in my account it now has 3 entries of my same card…wild. Maybe next time I can get a free drink…

Since it’s early enough in the day, I went with something from their milk tea menu. I had a green tea recently, so I’ll save their green tea for another day. Really the only other choice for me was their Assam, which I was happy to try out a black tea. The Alley has a specialty tea, called the Royal No. 9 I think, but it has a blueberry flavor I think. Maybe when I’m feeling more adventurous, but I’m not entirely a fan of blueberry flavoring. My dad did try it before and thought it was interesting though. Since the drink itself doesn’t come with boba, I got brown sugar boba, since I like the flavor of their boba. It should be fine since I’m getting less sugar right…

The drink is a very smooth, creamy, bold tasting black tea. When I first sipped it, it gave me coffee vibes, with how kind of roast-y it tasted. The flavor is very rich and apparent, and has the perfect consistency of drink, not too thick or creamy, and not too watery thin. The boba itself has a great texture, chewy, and has a great roasted brown sugar flavor to it too.

My mom got the Assam, but as a latte with whole milk, and regular boba. I’m wondering how regular boba is compared to the brown sugar boba, like do they all come from the same pot but they add brown sugar at the last minute? Is there a regular boba vat and a brown sugar boba vat? Maybe someday I’ll try the latte option to see if there is a taste or consistency difference, but I did notice my mom’s drink was slightly lighter in color than mine, so at least there’s a visual difference. I could also tell some brown sugar syrup on the edge of my cup too, so is the brown sugar boba just added syrup?

Details: The Alley Assam Milk Tea; large; 50% sugar; no ice; with brown sugar boba; from The Alley (Irvine Spectrum)