Wintermelon Tea Latte – Tea Maru

I went on a (friend) hot pot date tonight at a relatively new hot pot place I’ve been meaning to try out! My friend has been craving hot pot since ’tis the coming cold-ish season, so I suggested a few hot pot places, and we ended up going to a Korean-shabu shabu fusion place. The food was pretty good, but the service was a bit slow…I really think they were probably understaffed a little, but still, it took a while and a few asks for some requests to actually get made. Afterwards, my friend wanted a new boba place recommendation, so I showed her Tea Maru’s menu, which was not too far away from where we were, and she was ok with it, so that’s why we went there.

I was really thinking of getting a non-caffeinated drink since it was pretty late in the evening, but I started kind of thinking of getting a somewhat new drink, and the mango matcha sounded pretty good in the moment too. In the end, I did see they have a wintermelon latte option, which is indeed non-caffeinated, as per their symbol on the menu, so I went with that.

Ok, so at first, I asked for brown sugar boba, but the cashier said they only had strawberry boba at the moment, so I was like, fine, not ideal, but I’ll take the strawberry boba as an interesting combination. Then I was ordering a Taro Storm for my mom, and the cashier said they didn’t have sweet potato boba, and that it was only a weekend thing. After I called my mom, she said she didn’t want it anymore, and it was around this time that the cashier told me they would have mango boba ready in 8 minutes. Since I hadn’t had their mango boba yet, I considered trying it out, but then he also said they would have brown sugar boba in 20 minutes. My friend who drove me didn’t mind waiting, so I went ahead and ordered brown sugar boba for myself, and my mom. But why didn’t the guy tell me this in the first place???

The drink was a really good wintermelong latte, ha! It had a strong wintermelon tea taste, and I was almost suspicious they didn’t add any extra sugar because it tastes like the classic wintermelon tea drinks. Don’t get me wrong, I love those, but those tend to have quite a bit of sugar in them. It didn’t taste overly sweet to me, and still tasted great, but I still wonder…I couldn’t get much milk taste, but the focus was on the wintermelon, so I guess that’s good, and that the milk was just there for texture. Boba itself, even though freshly cooked, tasted like their normal brown sugar boba, pretty good texture, and great brown sugar taste.

Details: Wintermelon Tea Latte; 50% Sugar; no ice; with brown sugar boba; from Tea Maru (Irvine)